Page:Christian Science versus Pantheism.djvu/47

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MESSAGE FOR 1900
33

aside the old garment, you purchase, at whatever price, a new one that is up to date. To-day you have come to a sumptuous feast, to one that for many years has been awaiting you. The guests are distinguished above human title and this feast is a Passover. To sit at this table of their Lord and partake of what divine Love hath prepared for them, Christian Scientists start forward with true ambition. The Passover, spiritually discerned, is a wonderful passage over a tear-filled sea of repentance — which of all human experience is the most divine; and after this Passover cometh victory, faith, and good works.

When a supercilious consciousness that saith “there is no sin,” has awakened to see through sin's disguise the claim of sin, and thence to see that sin has no claim, it yields to sharp conviction — it sits in sackcloth — it waits in the desert — and fasts in the wilderness. But all this time divine Love has been preparing a feast for this awakened consciousness. To-day you have come to Love's feast, and you kneel at its altar. May you have on a wedding garment new and old, and the touch of the hem of this garment heal the sick and the sinner!

In the words of St. John, may the angel of The Mother Church write of this church: “Thou hast not left thy first love, I know thy works, and charity, and service, and faith, and thy patience, and thy works; and the last to be more than the first.”

Watch! till the storms are o'er —
 The cold blasts done,
The reign of heaven begun,
 And love, the evermore.