Articles

Attending , listening, hearkening, and obeying are words with which all Bible students are familiar. Although they may appear on first examination to be anything but synonymous, they will be found on closer examination to express attitudes and activities very closely and intimately related, if not indeed completely identical.

The beloved Leader of the Christian Science movement, Mary Baker Eddy, through whom the Manual of The Mother Church was unfolded, in speaking of its By-Laws tells us in "Miscellaneous Writings" ( Miscellaneous Writings, p. 148 ), that "they were impelled by a power not one's own;" and she adds, "They sprang from necessity, the logic of events,—from the immediate demand for them as a help that must be supplied to maintain the dignity and defense of our Cause.

OUR Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, has in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" given us a Glossary in which she translates certain terms into their spiritual meaning. For instance, on page 585 she gives the definition for "earth" thus: "A sphere; a type of eternity and immortality, which are likewise without beginning or end.

LITTLE children early develop a fearless trust in their parents and a willing obedience to a just and right discipline. With perfect confidence that their father and mother will supply their needs, they sing, play, and sleep in blissful contentment; to-morrow has for them no dread—it is rather a glad unfoldment of joyous existence; yesterday is remembered no more in the glad appreciation of to-day.

AS hopeless as the task of attempting to lift ourselves by our own boot straps is the effort to lift ourselves out of error without an understanding of God—to try to dispel the darkness of error without the light of Truth. Yet how often we try to do this very thing! Animal magnetism is the fraudulent attraction of materiality; and this fraudulent attraction, if yielded to, tends to mislead us as Christian Scientists into dwelling with material sense, thinking about it, accepting its suggestions unchallenged, taking them for granted, and building up bit by bit, detail by detail, what we may call a mountainous false claim.

JESUS said, "He that humbleth himself shall be exalted. " If the spiritual meaning of these words could be realized, it would assuredly enable the student to rise into a closer walk with God.

IN the fifty-fifth chapter of Isaiah we read, "Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not?" In human affairs how many of us have experienced the illusive nature of the things we thought we must have! When we got them we were still unsatisfied. The pleasure which in expectation we were to receive vanished on the receiving.

IN every activity of the Christian Science movement there arise times when error seems to pervade the mental atmosphere and threatens to destroy the harmony which should prevail among those working for the furtherance of the Cause which all true Christian Scientists have at heart. During one of these periods of apparent want of unity, a student and worker gained much light and healing from a careful study of Hymn 11 of the Christian Science Hymnal, the first verse of which runs: "Why search the future and the past? Why do ye look with tearful eyes, And seek, far off, for Paradise? Beneath thy feet, Life's pearl is cast.

IN order to acquire a working knowledge of Christian Science it is necessary to learn something of the truth about God's law of cause and effect. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of this Science, gives a fundamental statement on this law on page 173 of "Miscellaneous Writings," where she declares: "Mind is its own great cause and effect.

MANY centuries have passed since the scribe used his metaphor of a garden to record the early chapters of human history. It has remained for Christian Science to turn its dazzling searchlight upon these early records of the race and expose the whole vast material fraud.