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PULPIT AND PRESS
BY
MARY BAKER EDDY
DISCOVERER AND FOUNDER OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND AUTHOR OF SCIENCE AND
HEALTH WITH KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES
Registered
U.S. Patent Office
Published by The
Trustees under the Will of Mary Baker G. Eddy
BOSTON, U.S.A.
Authorized Literature of
THE FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST, SCIENTIST
in Boston, Massachusetts
_Copyright, 1895_
BY MARY BAKER EDDY
_Copyright renewed, 1923_
* * * * *
_All rights reserved_
* * * * *
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
THE DEAR TWO THOUSAND AND SIX HUNDRED CHILDREN
WHOSE CONTRIBUTIONS OF $4,460[A] WERE DEVOTED TO THE MOTHER'S ROOM IN THE
FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST, SCIENTIST, BOSTON, THIS UNIQUE BOOK IS TENDERLY
DEDICATED BY
MARY BAKER EDDY
PREFACE
This volume contains scintillations from press and pulpit--utterances which
epitomize the story of the birth of Christian Science, in 1866, and its
progress during the ensuing thirty years. Three quarters of a century
hence, when the children of to-day are the elders of the twentieth century,
it will be interesting to have not only a record of the inclination given
their own thoughts in the latter half of the nineteenth century, but also a
registry of the rise of the mercury in the glass of the world's opinion.
It will then be instructive to turn backward the telescope of that advanced
age, with its lenses of more spiritual mentality, indicating the gain of
intellectual momentum, on the early footsteps of Christian Science as
planted in the pathway of this generation; to note the impetus thereby
given to Christianity; to con the facts surrounding the cradle of this
grand verity--that the sick are healed and sinners saved, not by matter,
but by Mind; and to scan further the features of the vast problem of
eternal life, as expressed in the absolute power of Truth and the actual
bliss of man's existence in Science.
MARY BAKER EDDY
February, 1895
CONTENTS
DEDICATORY SERMON
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE TEXTBOOK
HYMNS
_Laying the Corner-stone_
"_Feed My Sheep_"
_Christ My Refuge_
NOTE
CLIPPINGS FROM NEWSPAPERS
CHICAGO INTER-OCEAN
BOSTON HERALD
BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBE
BOSTON TRANSCRIPT
JACKSON PATRIOT
OUTLOOK
AMERICAN ART JOURNAL
BOSTON JOURNAL
REPUBLIC (WASHINGTON, D.C.)
NEW YORK TRIBUNE
KANSAS CITY JOURNAL
MONTREAL HERALD
BALTIMORE AMERICAN
REPORTER (LEBANON, IND.)
NEW YORK COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER
SYRACUSE POST
NEW YORK HERALD
TORONTO GLOBE
CONCORD MONITOR
PEOPLE AND PATRIOT
UNION SIGNAL
NEW CENTURY
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE JOURNAL
CONCORD MONITOR
PULPIT AND PRESS
DEDICATORY SERMON
BY REV. MARY BAKER EDDY
First Pastor of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, Mass.
Delivered January 6, 1895
TEXT: _They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of Thy
house; and Thou shall make them drink of the river of Thy
pleasures._--Psalms xxxvi. 8.
A new year 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.
An old year is time's adult, and 1893 was a distinguished character,
notable for good and evil. Time past and time present, both, may pain us,
but time _improved_ is eloquent in God's praise. For due refreshment garner
the memory of 1894; for if wiser by reason of its large lessons, and
records deeply engraven, great is the value thereof.
Pass on, returnless year!
The path behind thee is with glory crowned;
This spot whereon thou troddest was holy ground;
Pass proudly to thy bier!
To-day, being with you in spirit, what need that I should be present _in
propria persona?_ Were I present, methinks I should be much like the Queen
of Sheba, when she saw the house Solomon had erected. In the expressive
language of Holy Writ, "There was no more spirit in her;" and she said,
"Behold, the half was not told me: thy wisdom and prosperity exceedeth the
fame which I heard." Both without and within, the spirit of beauty
dominates The Mother Church, from its mosaic flooring to the soft shimmer
of its starlit dome.
Nevertheless, there is a thought higher and deeper than the edifice.
Material light and shade are temporal, not eternal. Turning the attention
from sublunary views, however enchanting, think for a moment with me of the
house wherewith "they shall be abundantly satisfied,"--even the "house not
made with hands, eternal in the heavens." With the mind's eye glance at the
direful scenes of the war between China and Japan. Imagine yourselves in a
poorly barricaded fort, fiercely besieged by the enemy. Would you rush
forth single-handed to combat the foe? Nay, would you not rather strengthen
your citadel by every means in your power, and remain within the walls for
its defense? Likewise should we do as metaphysicians and Christian
Scientists. The real house in which "we live, and move, and have our being"
is Spirit, God, the eternal harmony of infinite Soul. The enemy we confront
would overthrow this sublime fortress, and it behooves us to defend our
heritage.
How can we do this Christianly scientific work? By intrenching ourselves in
the knowledge that our true temple is no human fabrication, but the
superstructure of Truth, reared on the foundation of Love, and pinnacled
in Life. Such being its nature, how can our godly temple possibly be
demolished, or even disturbed? Can eternity end? Can Life die? Can Truth be
uncertain? Can Love be less than boundless? Referring to this temple, our
Master said: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."
He also said: "The kingdom of God is within you." Know, then, that you
possess sovereign power to think and act rightly, and that nothing can
dispossess you of this heritage and trespass on Love. If you maintain this
position, who or what can cause you to sin or suffer? Our surety is in our
confidence that we are indeed dwellers in Truth and Love, man's eternal
mansion. Such a heavenly assurance ends all warfare, and bids tumult cease,
for the good fight we have waged is over, and divine Love gives us the true
sense of victory. "They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of
Thy house; and Thou shalt make them drink of the river of Thy pleasures."
No longer are we of the church militant, but of the church triumphant; and
with Job of old we exclaim, "Yet in my flesh shall I see God." The river of
His pleasures is a tributary of divine Love, whose living waters have their
source in God, and flow into everlasting Life. We drink of this river when
all human desires are quenched, satisfied with what is pleasing to the
divine Mind.
Perchance some one of you may say, "The evidence of spiritual verity in me
is so small that I am afraid. I feel so far from victory over the flesh
that to reach out for a present realization of my hope savors of temerity.
Because of my own unfitness for such a spiritual animus my strength is
naught and my faith fails." O thou "weak and infirm of purpose." Jesus
said, "Be not afraid"!
"What if the little rain should say,
'So small a drop as I
Can ne'er refresh a drooping earth,
I'll tarry in the sky.'"
Is not a man metaphysically and mathematically number one, a unit, and
therefore whole number, governed and protected by his divine Principle,
God? You have simply to preserve a scientific, positive sense of unity with
your divine source, and daily demonstrate this. Then you will find that one
is as important a factor as duodecillions in being and doing right, and
thus demonstrating deific Principle. A dewdrop reflects the sun. Each of
Christ's little ones reflects the infinite One, and therefore is the seer's
declaration true, that "one on God's side is a majority."
A single drop of water may help to hide the stars, or crown the tree with
blossoms.
Who lives in good, lives also in God,--lives in all Life, through all
space. His is an individual kingdom, his diadem a crown of crowns. His
existence is deathless, forever unfolding its eternal Principle. Wait
patiently on illimitable Love, the lord and giver of Life. _Reflect this
Life_, and with it cometh the full power of being. "They shall be
abundantly satisfied with the fatness of Thy house."
In 1893 the World's Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago, used, in all
its public sessions, my form of prayer since 1866; and one of the very
clergymen who had publicly proclaimed me "the prayerless Mrs. Eddy,"
offered his audible adoration in the words I use, besides listening to an
address on Christian Science from my pen, read by Judge S.J. Hanna, in that
unique assembly.
When the light of one friendship after another passes from earth to heaven,
we kindle in place thereof the glow of some deathless reality. Memory,
faithful to goodness, holds in her secret chambers those characters of
holiest sort, bravest to endure, firmest to suffer, soonest to renounce.
Such was the founder of the Concord School of Philosophy--the late A.
Bronson Alcott.
After the publication of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,"
his athletic mind, scholarly and serene, was the first to bedew my hope
with a drop of humanity. When the press and pulpit cannonaded this book, he
introduced himself to its author by saying, "I have come to comfort you."
Then eloquently paraphrasing it, and prophesying its prosperity, his
conversation with a beauty all its own reassured me. _That prophecy is
fulfilled._
This book, in 1895, is in its ninety-first edition of one thousand copies.
It is in the public libraries of the principal cities, colleges, and
universities of America; also the same in Great Britain, France, Germany,
Russia, Italy, Greece, Japan, India, and China; in the Oxford University
and the Victoria Institute, England; in the Academy of Greece, and the
Vatican at Rome.
This book is the leaven fermenting religion; it is palpably working in the
sermons, Sunday Schools, and literature of our and other lands. This
spiritual chemicalization is the upheaval produced when Truth is
neutralizing error and impurities are passing off. And it will continue
till the antithesis of Christianity, engendering the limited forms of a
national or tyrannical religion, yields to the church established by the
Nazarene Prophet and maintained on the spiritual foundation of Christ's
healing.
Good, the Anglo-Saxon term for God, unites Science to Christianity. It
presents to the understanding, not matter, but Mind; not the deified drug,
but the goodness of God--healing and saving mankind.
The author of "Marriage of the Lamb," who made the mistake of thinking she
caught her notions from my book, wrote to me in 1894, "Six months ago your
book, Science and Health, was put into my hands. I had not read three pages
before I realized I had found that for which I had hungered since girlhood,
and was healed instantaneously of an ailment of seven years' standing. I
cast from me the false remedy I had vainly used, and turned to the 'great
Physician.' I went with my husband, a missionary to China, in 1884. He went
out under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church. I feel the truth
is leading us to return to Japan."
Another brilliant enunciator, seeker, and servant of Truth, the Rev.
William R. Alger of Boston, signalled me kindly as my lone bark rose and
fell and rode the rough sea. At a _conversazione_ in Boston, he said, "You
may find in Mrs. Eddy's metaphysical teachings more than is dreamt of in
your philosophy."
Also that renowned apostle of anti-slavery, Wendell Phillips, the native
course of whose mind never swerved from the chariot-paths of justice,
speaking of my work, said: "Had I young blood in my veins, I would help
that woman."
I love Boston, and especially the laws of the State whereof this city is
the capital. To-day, as of yore, her laws have befriended progress.
Yet when I recall the past,--how the gospel of healing was simultaneously
praised and persecuted in Boston,--and remember also that God is just, I
wonder whether, were our dear Master in our New England metropolis at this
hour, he would not weep over it, as he wept over Jerusalem! O ye tears! Not
in vain did ye flow. Those sacred drops were but enshrined for future use,
and God has now unsealed their receptacle with His outstretched arm. Those
crystal globes made morals for mankind. They will rise with joy, and with
power to wash away, in floods of forgiveness, every crime, even when
mistakenly committed in the name of religion.
An unjust, unmerciful, and oppressive priesthood must perish, for false
prophets in the present as in the past stumble onward to their doom; while
their tabernacles crumble with dry rot. "God is not mocked," and "the word
of the Lord endureth forever."
I have ordained the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, "Science and
Health with Key to the Scriptures," as pastor of The First Church of
Christ, Scientist, in Boston,--so long as this church is satisfied with
this pastor. This is my first ordination. "They shall be abundantly
satisfied with the fatness of Thy house; and Thou shalt make them drink of
the river of Thy pleasures."
All praise to the press of America's Athens,--and throughout our land the
press has spoken out historically, impartially. Like the winds telling
tales through the leaves of an ancient oak, unfallen, may our church chimes
repeat my thanks to the press.
Notwithstanding the perplexed condition of our nation's finances, the want
and woe with millions of dollars unemployed in our money centres, the
Christian Scientists, within fourteen months, responded to the call for
this church with $191,012. Not a mortgage was given nor a loan solicited,
and the donors all touchingly told their privileged joy at helping to build
The Mother Church. There was no urging, begging, or borrowing; only the
need made known, and forth came the money, or diamonds, which served to
erect this "miracle in stone."
Even the children vied with their parents to meet the demand. Little hands,
never before devoted to menial services, shoveled snow, and babes gave
kisses to earn a few pence toward this consummation. Some of these lambs my
prayers had christened, but Christ will rechristen them with his own new
name. "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings Thou hast perfected
praise." The resident youthful workers were called "Busy Bees."
Sweet society, precious children, your loving hearts and deft fingers
distilled the nectar and painted the finest flowers in the fabric of this
history,--even its centre-piece,--Mother's Room in The First Church of
Christ, Scientist, in Boston. The children are destined to witness results
which will eclipse Oriental dreams. They belong to the twentieth century.
By juvenile aid, into the building fund have come $4,460.[B] Ah, children,
you are the bulwarks of freedom, the cement of society, the hope of our
race!
Brothers of the Christian Science Board of Directors, when your tireless
tasks are done--well done--no Delphian lyre could break the full chords of
such a rest. May the altar you have built never be shattered in our hearts,
but justice, mercy, and love kindle perpetually its fires.
It was well that the brother whose appliances warm this house, warmed also
our perishless hope, and nerved its grand fulfilment. Woman, true to her
instinct, came to the rescue as sunshine from the clouds; so, when man
quibbled over an architectural exigency, a woman climbed with feet and
hands to the top of the tower, and helped settle the subject.
After the loss of our late lamented pastor, Rev. D.A. Easton, the church
services were maintained by excellent sermons from the editor of _The
Christian Science Journal_ (who, with his better half, is a very whole
man), together with the Sunday School giving this flock "drink from the
river of His pleasures." O glorious hope and blessed assurance, "it is your
Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." Christians rejoice in
secret, they have a bounty hidden from the world. Self-forgetfulness,
purity, and love are treasures untold--constant prayers, prophecies, and
anointings. Practice, not profession,--goodness, not doctrines,--spiritual
understanding, not mere belief, gain the ear and right hand of omnipotence,
and call down blessings infinite. "Faith without works is dead." The
foundation of enlightened faith is Christ's teachings and _practice_. It
was our Master's self-immolation, his life-giving love, healing both mind
and body, that raised the deadened conscience, paralyzed by inactive faith,
to a quickened sense of mortal's necessities,--and God's power and purpose
to supply them. It was, in the words of the Psalmist, He "who forgiveth all
thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases."
Rome's fallen fanes and silent Aventine is glory's tomb; her pomp and power
lie low in dust. Our land, more favored, had its Pilgrim Fathers. On shores
of solitude, at Plymouth Rock, they planted a nation's heart,--the rights
of conscience, imperishable glory. No dream of avarice or ambition broke
their exalted purpose, theirs was the wish to reign in hope's reality--the
realm of Love.
Christian Scientists, you have planted your standard on the rock of Christ,
the true, the spiritual idea,--the chief corner-stone in the house of our
God. And our Master said: "The stone which the builders rejected, the same
is become the head of the corner." If you are less appreciated to-day than
your forefathers, wait--for if you are as devout as they, and more
scientific, as progress certainly demands, your plant is immortal. Let us
rejoice that chill vicissitudes have not withheld the timely shelter of
this house, which descended like day-spring from on high.
Divine presence, breathe Thou Thy blessing on every heart in this house.
Speak out, O soul! This is the newborn of Spirit, this is His redeemed;
this, His beloved. May the kingdom of God within you,--with you
alway,--reascending, bear you outward, upward, heavenward. May the sweet
song of silver-throated singers, making melody more real, and the organ's
voice, as the sound of many waters, and the Word spoken in this sacred
temple dedicated to the ever-present God--mingle with the joy of angels and
rehearse your hearts' holy intents. May all whose means, energies, and
prayers helped erect The Mother Church, find within it home, and _heaven_.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE TEXTBOOK
The following selections from "Science and Health with Key to the
Scriptures," pages 568-571, were read from the platform. The impressive
stillness of the audience indicated close attention.
_Revelation_ xii. 10-12. And I heard a loud voice saying in
heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of
our God, and the power of His Christ: for the accuser of our
brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and
night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the
word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the
death. Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them.
Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil
is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that
he hath but a short time.
For victory over a single sin, we give thanks and magnify the Lord of
Hosts. What shall we say of the mighty conquest over all sin? A louder
song, sweeter than has ever before reached high heaven, now rises clearer
and nearer to the great heart of Christ; for the accuser is not there, and
Love sends forth her primal and everlasting strain. Self-abnegation, by
which we lay down all for Truth, or Christ, in our warfare against error,
is a rule in Christian Science. This rule clearly interprets God as divine
Principle,--as Life, represented by the Father; as Truth, represented by
the Son; as Love, represented by the Mother. Every mortal at some period,
here or hereafter, must grapple with and overcome the mortal belief in a
power opposed to God.
The Scripture, "Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee
ruler over many," is literally fulfilled, when we are conscious of the
supremacy of Truth, by which the nothingness of error is seen; and we know
that the nothingness of error is in proportion to its wickedness. He that
touches the hem of Christ's robe and masters his mortal beliefs, animality,
and hate, rejoices in the proof of healing,--in a sweet and certain sense
that God is Love. Alas for those who break faith with divine Science and
fail to strangle the serpent of sin as well as of sickness! They are
dwellers still in the deep darkness of belief. They are in the surging sea
of error, not struggling to lift their heads above the drowning wave.
What must the end be? They must eventually expiate their sin through
suffering. The sin, which one has made his bosom companion, comes back to
him at last with accelerated force, for the devil knoweth his time is
short. Here the Scriptures declare that evil is temporal, not eternal. The
dragon is at last stung to death by his own malice; but how many periods of
torture it may take to remove all sin, must depend upon sin's obduracy.
_Revelation_ xii. 13. And when the dragon saw that he was cast
unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the
man child.
The march of mind and of honest investigation will bring the hour when the
people will chain, with fetters of some sort, the growing occultism of this
period. The present apathy as to the tendency of certain active yet unseen
mental agencies will finally be shocked into another extreme mortal
mood,--into human indignation; for one extreme follows another.
_Revelation_ xii. 15, 16. And the serpent cast out of his mouth
water as a flood, after the woman, that he might cause her to be
carried away of the flood. And the earth helped the woman, and the
earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the
dragon cast out of his mouth.
Millions of unprejudiced minds--simple seekers for Truth, weary wanderers,
athirst in the desert--are waiting and watching for rest and drink. Give
them a cup of cold water in Christ's name, and never fear the consequences.
What if the old dragon should send forth a new flood to drown the
Christ-idea? He can neither drown your voice with its roar, nor again sink
the world into the deep waters of chaos and old night. In this age the
earth will help the woman; the spiritual idea will be understood. Those
ready for the blessing you impart will give thanks. The waters will be
pacified, and Christ will command the wave.
When God heals the sick or the sinning, they should know the great benefit
which Mind has wrought. They should also know the great delusion of mortal
mind, when it makes them sick or sinful. Many are willing to open the eyes
of the people to the power of good resident in divine Mind, but they are
not so willing to point out the evil in human thought, and expose evil's
hidden mental ways of accomplishing iniquity.
Why this backwardness, since exposure is necessary to ensure the avoidance
of the evil? Because people like you better when you tell them their
virtues than when you tell them their vices. It requires the spirit of our
blessed Master to tell a man his faults, and so risk human displeasure for
the sake of doing right and benefiting our race. Who is telling mankind of
the foe in ambush? Is the informer one who sees the foe? If so, listen and
be wise. Escape from evil, and designate those as unfaithful stewards who
have seen the danger and yet have given no warning.
At all times and under all circumstances, overcome evil with good. Know
thyself, and God will supply the wisdom and the occasion for a victory over
evil. Clad in the panoply of Love, human hatred cannot reach you. The
cement of a higher humanity will unite all interests in the one divinity.
HYMNS
BY REV. MARY BAKER EDDY
[Set to the Church Chimes and Sung on This Occasion]
LAYING THE CORNER-STONE
_Laus Deo_, it is done!
Rolled away from loving heart
Is a stone.
Joyous, risen, we depart
Having one.
_Laus Deo_,--on this rock
(Heaven chiselled squarely good)
Stands His church,--
God is Love, and understood
By His flock.
_Laus Deo_, night starlit
Slumbers not in God's embrace;
Then, O man!
Like this stone, be in thy place;
Stand, not sit.
Cold, silent, stately stone,
Dirge and song and shoutings low,
In thy heart
Dwell serene,--and sorrow? No,
It has none,
_Laus Deo!_
"FEED MY SHEEP"
Shepherd, show me how to go
O'er the hillside steep,
How to gather, how to sow,--
How to feed Thy sheep;
I will listen for Thy voice,
Lest my footsteps stray;
I will follow and rejoice
All the rugged way.
Thou wilt bind the stubborn will,
Wound the callous breast,
Make self-righteousness be still,
Break earth's stupid rest.
Strangers on a barren shore,
Lab'ring long and lone--
We would enter by the door,
And Thou know'st Thine own.
So, when day grows dark and cold,
Tear or triumph harms,
Lead Thy lambkins to the fold,
Take them in Thine arms;
Feed the hungry, heal the heart,
Till the morning's beam;
White as wool, ere they depart--
Shepherd, wash them clean.
CHRIST MY REFUGE
O'er waiting harpstrings of the mind
There sweeps a strain,
Low, sad, and sweet, whose measures bind
The power of pain.
And wake a white-winged angel throng
Of thoughts, illumed
By faith, and breathed in raptured song,
With love perfumed.
Then his unveiled, sweet mercies show
Life's burdens light.
I kiss the cross, and wake to know
A world more bright.
And o'er earth's troubled, angry sea
I see Christ walk,
And come to me, and tenderly,
Divinely talk.
Thus Truth engrounds me on the rock,
Upon Life's shore;
'Gainst which the winds and waves can shock,
Oh, nevermore!
From tired joy and grief afar,
And nearer Thee,--
Father, where Thine own children are,
I love to be.
My prayer, some daily good to do
To Thine, for Thee;
An offering pure of Love, whereto
God leadeth me.
NOTE
BY REV. MARY BAKER EDDY
The land whereon stands The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston,
was first purchased by the church and society. Owing to a heavy loss, they
were unable to pay the mortgage; therefore I paid it, and through trustees
gave back the land to the church.
In 1892 I had to recover the land from the trustees, reorganize the church,
and reobtain its charter--not, however, through the State Commissioner, who
refused to grant it, but by means of a statute of the State, and through
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