You have proven that the greatest piety is scarcely sufficient to demonstrate what you have adopted and taught; that your work, well done, would dignify angels.
Faithfully, as meekly, you have toiled all night; and at break of day caught much. At times, your net has been so full that it broke: human pride, creeping into its meshes, extended it beyond safe expansion; then, losing hold of divine Love, you lost your fishes, and possibly blamed others more than yourself. But those whom God makes “fishers of men” will not pull for the shore; like Peter, they launch into the depths, cast their nets on the right side, compensate loss, and gain a higher sense of the true idea. Nothing is lost that God gives: had He filled the net, it would not have broken.
Leaving the seed of Truth to its own vitality, it propagates: the tares cannot hinder it. Our Master said, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away;” and Jesus' faith in Truth must not exceed that of Christian Scientists who prove its power to be immortal.
The Christianity that is merely of sects, the pulpit, and fashionable society, is brief; but the Word of God abideth. Plato was a pagan; but no greater difference existed between his doctrines and those of Jesus, than to-day exists between the Catholic and Protestant sects. I love the orthodox church; and, in time, that church will love Christian Science. Let me specially call the attention of this Association to the following false beliefs inclining mortal mind more deviously:—
The belief in anti-Christ: that somebody in the flesh is the son of God, or is another Christ, or is a spiritually adopted child, or is an incarnated babe, is the evil one —
