In the year 1893, during the World's Fair held in Chicago, Illinois, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, received invitations from some of her followers in that city to share the hospitality of their homes. She answered these plans for her pleasure with a card in The Christian Science Journal which included the following sentences: "I have a world of wisdom and Love to contemplate, that concerns me, and you, infinitely beyond all earthly expositions or exhibitions. In return for your kindness, I earnestly invite you to its contemplation with me, and to preparation to behold it." Later this card was included among the memorabilia recorded in her book "Miscellaneous Writings" (pp. 321, 322) and thereby extended her invitation to all readers of her message.
The language of this unusual invitation implies the nearness rather than the remoteness of this world of Love. There is also evident within this invitation a certain urgency to impress upon the reader the fact that the world to which our Leader refers is of immediate concern to men, together with the need of their preparation to discern it. The impression is given that what our Leader was contemplating and recommending to her followers' attention was not a dream world, but the world of existing reality, the world God made, the infinite universe of Mind. This was what St. John saw while on Patmos; this was what Christ Jesus described as the kingdom of heaven.
The Master was prepared to behold this sublime view because of his more than human origin. St. John and, later, the Discoverer of divine Science, Mrs. Eddy, were ready for the vision because of their inspired, spiritual comprehension of God and His creation. In Revelation and in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," their authors have described in inimitable language the perfection and majesty of God's handiwork, further unfolding the matchless statements of the first Christian. As the reader of these works finds his thoughts purged of human misconceptions and touched with the pure meaning of divine Love, he is lifted to the vantage point where the universe of Love's creating is spread before him. Then spiritual contemplation of reality unfolding into realization finally becomes concrete experience.
