Articles

The Bible, which holds an important place in all Christian Science services, is often referred to as "the Book of books," and it is indeed true that one's outlook upon life is determined by his attitude toward the Bible. In it are to be found the great truths which enabled Moses and others to find and to understand God.

One of the perplexing problems to an eager young student in Christian Science is the refusal of mortal mind to see anything except matter and its modes, and its refusal to reason from any other premise. When Jesus said, "They seeing see not; and hearing they hear not," he was confronted with the same phase of human blindness that to-day his followers encounter.

Very early in human history, as recorded in Genesis, we are told of a people who, with clay for bricks and slime for mortar, proceeded to build a tower, the top of which, as they said, might "reach unto heaven. " We may have smiled a little as we read this account, and thought to ourselves what an inconsistent, impossible, and interminable undertaking; yet we may no doubt still find to-day a much greater number of people attempting practically the same thing,—striving to attain harmony, contentment, and happiness by assuming that matter is a perfectly safe and satisfactory foundation upon which to build, and by rearing thereon an entirely material structure.

At a lecture on Christian Science given in our city some time ago, the lecturer concluded with the simple yet profound advice which Jesus gave to his disciples, "Have faith in God. " After listening to his words of assurance as to the nature of God, His omnipotence, ever presence, and infinite goodness, it seemed indeed to be the only reasonable thing to do,— not only to have faith, but more faith than we had ever experienced before.

" We tread on forces. Withdraw them, and creation must collapse.

After the Jew has accepted Christian Science, there arises in him a persistent, albeit unconscious, effort to identify its teachings with those of Judaism. He will educe for proof of this identification the fact that there have been and still are rabbis possessing the healing power.

" Jesus of Nazareth was the most scientific man that ever trod the globe" (Science and Health, p. 313 ), is the grateful and loving tribute of the most scientific woman who has graced this world's history.

In studying "the burden of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi," which runs through the four chapters under that prophet's name in the Bible, one will comprehend the momentous necessity of being constantly alert to the purity and frequency of one's tithes and offerings. Materialism had so grown among the Israelites that they could not apprehend the wisdom, power, and perfection of God, Spirit, and so were offering for sacrifice the torn, lame, and sick things of material belief.

The words, "Then a sort of vision came to my troubled sense, which seemed to waken me to the truth," appearing in a testimony of Christian Science healing published in the Sentinel, arrested the writer's attention and threw upon the screen of human thought the lights and shadows of a healing experience in which twenty years' bondage to the tobacco habit was broken instantaneously through a glimpse of the spiritual idea, the real man. Corporeal sense had thus far successfully eluded detection as the source of those mentally suggested arguments that smoking tobacco was quite inexpensive, a solace, a comfort, a good companion, and, "Oh, everybody smokes!" Seemingly health had not been impaired, nor had the habit proved objectionable to family or associates.

The statement contained in the Explanatory Note in the Quarterly, read at the Sunday services by the First Reader before beginning the Lesson-Sermon, that "the canonical writings, together with the word of our textbook, corroborating and explaining the Bible texts in their spiritual import and application to all ages, past, present, and future, constitute a sermon undivorced from truth, uncontaminated and unfettered by human hypotheses, and divinely authorized," should be a constant warning and inspiration to every student of Christian Science to guard against any suggestion of mortal mind that any line of thought having as its source some certain Bible text and claiming his special attention at the moment, should be dismissed for the reason that it probably refers only to conditions long since ceasing to exist, or to some far distant age about which he need not now concern himself. It proved to be such to one student, when the prophecy recorded in Isaiah, "I will break the Assyrian in my land, and upon my mountains tread him under foot: then shall his yoke depart from off them, and his burden depart from off their shoulders," presented itself over and over to her thought, with peculiar insistence.