"A NEW year," Mrs. Eddy says in the opening sentence of the sermon written for the dedicatory service of The Mother Church edifice, Jan. 6, 1895, "is a nursling, a babe of time, a prophecy and promise clad in white raiment, kissed—and encumbered with greetings—redolent with grief and gratitude" (Pulpit and Press, p. 1). To those gathered on that day to dedicate this house of God to the uplift of humanity, the cup of happiness was full to overflowing, but their fondest hopes for the future of Christian Science could scarcely have pictured the rich fruitage which within two decades was to reward the tireless labors of page 22 of "Pulpit and Press," "if the lives of Christian Scientists attest their fidelity to Truth, . . . every Christian church in our land, and a few in far-off lands, will approximate the understanding of Christian Science sufficiently to heal the sick in his name."
As we stand today on the threshold of another new year, is not this the question it behooves us to ask ourselves, and to answer it honestly: Are we as Christian Scientists attesting to the world our fidelity to Truth? Are we ordering our lives by the commandment which bids us love God supremely and our neighbor as ourselves? If not, then it is high time to rouse ourselves, to get into the straight and narrow path of rectitude, and be faithful to the trust which our Leader reposed in her followers when she committed to their hands the propaganda of the great truth she had discovered. Never before has the need for those who have put on the "white raiment" of Christ like humility and love been so great. Every day the number of those who are breaking away from the old concepts of God and man is on the increase, and who shall guide them to deliverance if not those who have themselves been delivered from the bondage of sin and disease and who are rejoicing in "the glorious liberty of the children of God"?
The world has long been waiting for some great tidal wave of reform which in one mighty crest should sweep away the iniquity, the sorrow, and the suffering of mankind, but this wholesale reformation has proven an illusive hope. Christian Science, on the contrary, builds its faith in the dawn of the millennium on the simple rule of progression. Every case of healing in Christian Science, every life ordered by the golden rule of love, is productive of results whose ever-widening circle of influence upon other human lives is beyond estimate. Who can number today the multitudes that owe their deliverance from discord of every kind to the teachings of Christian Science as set forth in the text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," and exemplified in the lives of its faithful followers!
