Page:Miscellaneous Writings.djvu/197

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EXTRACTS FROM SERMON
171

“His hand is not shortened that it cannot save,” can never be wrested from its true meaning to signify human hands. Jesus' first effort to realize Truth was not wholly successful; but he rose to the occasion with the second attempt, and the blind saw clearly. To suppose that Jesus did actually anoint the blind man's eyes with his spittle, is as absurd as to think, according to the report of some, that Christian Scientists sit in back-to-back seances with their patients, for the divine power to filter from vertebræ to vertebræ. When one comes to the age with spiritual translations of God's messages, expressed in literal or physical terms, our right action is not to condemn and deny, but to “try the spirits” and see what manner they are of. This does not mean communing with spirits supposed to have departed from the earth, but the seeking out of the basis upon which are accomplished the works by which the new teacher would prove his right to be heard. By these signs are the true disciples of the Master known: the sick are healed; to the poor the gospel is preached.

Extract from a Sermon delivered in Boston, January 18, 1885

Text: The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened. — Matt. xiii. 33.

Few people at present know aught of the Science of mental healing; and so many are obtruding upon the public attention their ignorance or false knowledge in the name of Science, that it behooves all clad in the shining mail to keep bright their invincible armor; to keep