First pastor of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, Mass.,
Delivered Jan. 6, 1895.
TEXT--Psalms xxxvi, 8. "They shall be abundantly satisfied with the
fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy
pleasures."
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, 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 already 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 with God 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! Oh, 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 our God abideth forever."
I have ordained the Bible and the Christian Science text-book, 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 hast Thou
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. 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." Oh, glorious hope, and
blessed assurance, "it is the 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, oh, soul! This is the new-born of Spirit, this is His
redeemed, this, His beloved. May the Kingdom of God within you--with you
alway--re-ascending, 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 heart's holy intents. May all whose means,
energies, and prayers helped erect the Mother Church, find within it
home, and _Heaven_.