WHAT a helpful possession is the ability rightly to appraise and appreciate the worth and work of one's fellows! In his famous tribute to the virtues of chaste, industrious womanhood, King Lemuel, in the book of Proverbs (31:31) says, "Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates."
Can Christian Scientists be accused of deifying their Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, when they thank God for the purity and selflessness of her life, and express gratitude for the blessings her work has brought to mankind? In fact, do they truly understand the message of Christian Science until they recognize the fact that its Discoverer and Founder walked and talked with God, and voice their thankfulness therefor?
Christ Jesus did not seek personal homage from his disciples, but he did stress their acceptance of his words and work as evidence that he was a teacher divinely authorized and endowed. In like manner does the Leader of the Christian Science movement in her book "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 560) show the necessity of gaining what she calls in a marginal reference a "true estimate of God's messenger." She writes: "The great miracle, to human sense, is divine Love, and the grand necessity of existence is to gain the true idea of what constitutes the kingdom of heaven in man. This goal is never reached while we hate our neighbor or entertain a false estimate of anyone whom God has appointed to voice His Word. Again, without a correct sense of its highest visible idea, we can never understand the divine Principle." Then, a little farther on, she continues: "To misunderstand Paul, was to be ignorant of the divine idea he taught. Ignorance of the divine idea betrays at once a greater ignorance of the divine Principle of the idea—ignorance of Truth and Love."
