WHEN I first attended a Christian Science church, I was surprised to hear people testify of their gratitude to Christian Science for giving them the Bible. I had been a reader of the Bible from childhood, and found so much in it to delight and to help me, that I felt very sorry for people who had been so long deprived of its beauty and assistance. I supposed then that I understood the Bible; not entirely, of course, but in its essential parts. Some years passed, during which I read the Bible more zealously than ever, and attended regularly the church into which I had been baptized during infancy. I did not attend any Christian Science church, nor read any Christian Science books, or associate with any Christian Scientists, but I read the Bible in the light of the facts I had heard during the few weeks I had attended the meetings at First Church of Christ, Scientist, New York City. I found that I had always slurred over the accounts of the healing, without being conscious of it, and had fixed my thoughts on the mystical sayings—of John and Paul especially—of the New Testament writers, and of the prophet Isaiah. The beauty, perhaps also the undefined meaning, of these passages, had a peculiar fascination for me. Invisible things had always been to me the most interesting. As I write this, I recall a passage regarding Moses which fixed itself in my memory: "He endured, as seeing him who is invisible." I understood this to refer to God. Passages which spoke of immortality had appealed to me strongly; and those sayings of Christ Jesus which deal with death and immortality were continually drawing my thought deeper and deeper into "the hidden things of God."
As I read the Bible, after attending some Christian Science meetings, these things appealed to me no less than before, but the things said about healing began to loom up like mountains before a traveler whose journey has heretofore been on the plains. I read the first three Gospels carefully and noted all the verses that were devoted to healing or other so-called miracles, and all that were devoted to other subjects. I found the Gospel of Mark fuller of healing than any of the others, one third of this book being entirely devoted to this subject, and two fifths of it to healing and other miracles. Here was clear evidence that an eye-witness and, as I had been taught, an inspired writer had devoted to the subject of healing one third of the space he had consumed while writing about the most important person and events in the history of mankind. And I, who had been ignoring that portion of his life of Christ Jesus, had considered myself as possessing the Scriptures ! As I went deeper into the sacred pages, with a mind awakened to the importance attached to healing by the chief persons whose lives gave them a place in the Scripture records, the fact that healing in Christ's name is now being done began to stand out as the paramount fact of contemporary history. I had heard this fact testified to, and as I listened I had no way of escape from the conviction that the people were telling the truth. Being a lawyer, I had had some experience in weighing evidence, in rejecting false testimony and accepting the true. In the six weeks of attendance at Christian Science meetings I had become convinced that the Christ-healing was again occurring in our midst, beyond any reasonable doubt. During this time I said to a friend who was troubled about these things, " 'Seek, and ye shall find,' is the promise. We will both seek, and we shall both find the truth."
My friend went on into Christian Science, but I continued in my former faith. It was constantly more apparent, in the period that followed, that my church gave no more attention to those parts of the Bible which I had neglected, than I myself had done. Still, I did not see why I could not find the truth by seeking in this way; and I did find this fact, namely, that the very best of the ministers of my church did not claim to know as much about Christ, or to work as nearly like the Master, as the humblest Christian Scientists, occupying positions of comparative unimportance in the various ordinary callings. Finally the day came when the accumulating evidence left me no way of escape. I had to choose between Christ and Church, between Christian Science and so-called orthodoxy, between Truth in its own garments and error wearing garments it believes to be both Christian and apostolic. I passed Christmas, 1902, without making my election, but I could not pass New Year. Strangely enough, a now noted bishop helped me to abandon my long-time communion for Christian Science. He preached a sermon, after reading a chapter from the Gospels: a beautiful sermon it was, but one which absolutely ignored the vital word of the chapter he had read. A friend with whom I had attended service that day was delighted with the sermon. Had I never listened to a Christian Science service I, too, would have been pleased. Time and time again I had had a similar experience; but this was the last straw, and I saw that I would never find in the Church the truth which is peculiarly Christian, because neither the Church nor its very foremost men understand this truth. The reverend gentleman above referred to was even then recognized as a leading light, and his subsequent elevation to the bishopric established the fact.
I then turned to Christian Science, and soon became grateful to it for the Bible, exactly as did those for whom 1 had felt compassion a few years before. All the benefit I had previously derived from the Bible was preserved for me, and I found that, as I went forward in Christian Science, an enlarged, fruitful, and constantly increasing understanding of the Scriptures was the result. There are thousands in every denominational faith who are sincerely seeking the word of Truth, and, as Christ Jesus promised, they will find it, and they will find the truth in Christian Science, because it is there to be found and God's hand is not shortened so as to prevent its guiding the sincere seeker all the way that leads to Truth. The true aspirations of all earnest Christians will thus find fulfilment, more than fulfilment, for as humanity is freed from sin, disease and death will also disappear, which was the aim of Christ Jesus, if not of the churches professing his name. The various churches that take the name of Christ cannot conquer sin if they leave unassailed the things that are sin's foundation or fountain-head, and that are necessarily manifested in both disease and death. But Christian Science puts the axe at the root of the tree, for by eradicating the foundation of disease and death it destroys sin also; and when this fact is generally understood by those who regard themselves as Christians, they will be happy to enlist in an army that is waging successful instead of unsuccessful war against sin, and also against the other enemies of mankind that have heretofore met no serious antagonist. Then will this prophecy be fulfilled: "They shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them."
Soon after I accepted Christian Science I began to understand the journey of the Israelites in the wilderness, after they had accepted God's message and messenger and had decided to obey both. While looking recently in the Concordance to verify my recollection of the passage, "He endured, as seeing him who is invisible," my eye fell on another passage in Hebrews, where it says, "After ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions." Before I accepted Christian Science that passage was without meaning, but now it expresses perfectly my own experiences, and I am enabled to use it as the writer of that epistle would wish. Many parts of the Scriptures heretofore dark or vague are coming into clear and even blazing light, by which the way can be seen through what seem to be conditions of great difficulty.
The pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, which guided the children of Israel and made it impossible for the Egyptians to reach them, has become an operating fact in my life as well as an understandable event of ancient history. In times of our own illumination we press forward in the daylight of the truth clearly seen, to the truth just coming like a cloud into vague form and outline. In the darkness of troubled hours, when we turn our faces backward toward positions outgrown, the light of some truth, already discerned and demonstrated, shines into the darkness and redirects our footsteps in the forward way. We read that the cloud "came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these: so that the one came not near the other all the night."
The experiences which we have in Christian Science may even sound like absurdities to those who practically rule God out of daily life (that is in their mistaken belief, for He cannot be ruled out in fact). And so these experiences obstruct our way in any attempt to return to beliefs that have been proven erroneous by these very occurrences. Thus Christ becomes a stumbling-block to the Jews, and to the Greeks foolishness, "but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God." When the truth of spiritual being has even once been proven in a person's own experience, this paramount fact of being makes it impossible for one so illuminated to rejoin the Egyptians, those who cling to the false belief of material life.
On the other hand, those accepting as truth that falsehood, cannot go forward to even the least advanced of those who have proven the truth of spiritual being. The Egyptian who does pass through that cloud into the camp of Israel, sees the truth of being, and so becomes one of the children of Israel. Before Jacob's experiences which won for him the name of Israel, he was compelled to flee from home, on account of the discord which his superiority occasioned, even as Joseph for the same cause was sold a bondman into Egypt. During Jacob's flight the day came when "he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep." He took up the hardest things of his lot, faced them squarely, had the grace to rest rather than be disturbed, and in consequence he found himself lifted up to a realization of Truth worth all the hardship that it can ever cost any one,—a realization of the truth which, when a man findeth it, he "selleth all that he hath" in order securely and permanently to possess it against all possibility of loss.
"Surely the Lord is in this place," said Jacob. He is where any one enters into an understanding of the truth of spiritual being, and the nothingness of all that seems to be but is not because it is unlike God, for these things are "spiritually discerned." After laying our head on the hardest things of our earthly lot, the revelation of these things of the Spirit is sure to follow, and we become one of the children of Israel; or, in the spiritual interpretation of that term, as given by Mrs. Eddy, "The representatives of Soul, not corporeal sense; the offspring of Spirit, who, having wrestled with error, sin, and sense, are governed by divine Science" (Science and Health, p. 583). Such are they who faithfully follow our beloved Leader in the demonstration of the truth. They are the seed that is "as the dust of the earth," and are "spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south;" and, as the promise reads, "in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed."
Before I knew the truth in Science, I was like one looking longingly from a high place into the land of holiness and immortality across an impassable gulf. Knowledge of the truth through Science has bridged for me this gulf, and enabled me to take up the journey from the land of false suppositions believed to be true (which was recently declared by an eminent authority to be the grave) into the promised land of Truth, actually and practically discerned and demonstrated, whereby immortality is being brought to light. Speaking of those making this "passage from sense to Soul, from a material sense of existence to the spiritual, up to the glory prepared for them who love God" (Science and Health, p. 566), our beloved Leader says, "Stately Science pauses not, but moves before them, a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, leading to divine heights."
