The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany/Chapter 2.16
CHAPTER XVI
TRIBUTES
[New York Mail and Express]
Monument to Baron and Baroness de Hirsch
THE movement to erect a monument to the late Baron and Baroness de Hirsch enhsts my hearty sympathy. They were unquestionably used in a remarkable degree as instruments of divine Love.
Divine Love reforms, regenerates, giving to human weakness strength, serving as admonition, instruction, and governing all that really is. Divine Love is the noumenon and phenomenon, the Principle and practice of divine metaphysics. Love talked and not lived is a poor shift for the weak and worldly. Love lived in a court or cot is God exemplified, governing governments, industries, human rights, liberty, life.
In love for man we gain the only and true sense of love for God, practical good, and so rise and still rise to His image and likeness, and are made partakers of that Mind whence springs the universe.
Philanthropy is loving, ameliorative, revolutionary; it wakens lofty desires, new possibilities, achievements, and energies; it lays the axe at the root of the tree that bringeth not forth good fruit; it touches thought to spiritual issues, systematizes action, and insures success; it starts the wheels of right reason, revelation, justice, and mercy; it unselfs men and pushes on the ages. Love unfolds marvellous good and uncovers hidden evil. The philanthropist or reformer gives little thought to self-defence; his life's incentive and sacrifice need no apology. The good done and the good to do are his ever-present reward.
Love for mankind is the elevator of the human race; it demonstrates Truth and reflects divine Love. Good is divinely natural. Evil is unnatural; it has no origin in the nature of God, and He is the Father of all.
The great Galilean Prophet was, is, the reformer of reformers. His piety partook not of the travesties of human opinions, pagan mysticisms, tribal religion, Greek philosophy, creed, dogma, or materia medica. The divine Mind was his only instrumentality in religion or medicine. The so-called laws of matter he eschewed; with him matter was not the auxiliary of Spirit. He never appealed to matter to perform the functions of Spirit, divine Love.
Jesus cast out evil, disease, death, showing that all suffering is commensurate with sin; therefore, he cast out devils and healed the sick. He showed that every effect or amplification of wrong will revert to the wrong-doer; that sin punishes itself; hence his saying, “Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.” Love atones for sin through love that destroys sin. His rod is love.
We cannot remake ourselves, but we can make the best of what God has made. We can know that all is good because God made all, and that evil is not a fatherly grace.
All education is work. The thing most important is what we do, not what we say. God's open secret is seen through grace, truth, and love.
I enclose a check for five hundred dollars for the De Hirsch monument fund.
Tributes to Queen Victoria
Mr. William B. Johnson, C.S.B., Clerk.
Beloved Student: — I deem it proper that The Mother Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, the first church of Christian Science known on earth, should upon this solemn occasion congregate; that a special meeting of its First Members convene for the sacred purpose of expressing our deep sympathy with the bereaved nation, its loss and the world's loss, in the sudden departure of the late lamented Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Empress of India, — long honored, revered, beloved. “God save the Queen” is heard no more in England, but this shout of love lives on in the heart of millions.
With love,
| Pleasant View, Concord, N. H., | |
| January 27, 1901. |
It being inconvenient for me to attend the memorial meeting in the South Congregational church on Sunday evening, February 3, I herewith send a few words of condolence, which may be read on that tender occasion.
I am interested in a meeting to be held in the capital of my native State in memoriam of the late lamented Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Empress of India. It betokens a love and a loss felt by the strong hearts of New England and the United States. When contemplating this sudden international bereavement, the near seems afar, the distant nigh, and the tried and true seem few. The departed Queen's royal and imperial honors lose their lustre in the tomb, but her personal virtues can never be lost. Those live on in the affection of nations.
Few sovereigns have been as venerable, revered, and beloved as this noble woman, born in 1819, married in 1840, and deceased the first month of the new century.
Letter to Mrs. McKinley
My Dear Mrs. McKinley: — My soul reaches out to God for your support, consolation, and victory. Trust in Him whose love enfolds thee. “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee: because he trusteth in Thee.” “Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee.” Divine Love is never so near as when all earthly joys seem most afar.
Thy tender husband, our nation's chief magistrate, has passed earth's shadow into Life's substance. Through a momentary mist he beheld the dawn. He awaits to welcome you where no arrow wounds the eagle Soaring, where no partings are for love, where the high and holy call you again to meet.
“I knew that Thou hearest me always,” are the words of him who suffered and subdued sorrow. Hold this attitude of mind, and it will remove the sackcloth from thy home.
With love,
| Pleasant View, Concord, N. H., | |
| September 14, 1901. |
Tribute to President McKinley
Imperative, accumulative, holy demands rested on the life and labors of our late beloved President, William McKinley. Presiding over the destinies of a nation meant more to him than a mere rehearsal of aphorisms, a uniting of breaches soon to widen, a quiet assent or dissent. His work began with heavy strokes, measured movements, reaching from the infinitesimal to the infinite. It began by warming the marble of politics into zeal according to wisdom, quenching the volcanoes of partizanship, and uniting the interests of all peoples; and it ended with a universal good overcoming evil.
His home relations enfolded a wealth of affection, — a tenderness not talked but felt and lived. His humanity, weighed in the, scales of divinity, was not found wanting. His public intent was uniform, consistent, sympathetic, and so far as it fathomed the abyss of difficulties was wise, brave, unselfed. May his history waken a tone of truth that shall reverberate, renew euphony, emphasize humane power, and bear its banner into the vast forever.
While our nation's ensign of peace and prosperity waves over land and sea, while her reapers are strong, her sheaves garnered, her treasury filled, she is suddenly stricken, — called to mourn the loss of her renowned leader! Tears blend with her triumphs. She stops to think, to mourn, yea, to pray, that the God of harvests send her more laborers, who, while they work for their own country, shall sacredly regard the liberty of other peoples and the rights of man.
What cannot love and righteousness achieve for the race? All that can be accomplished, and more than history has yet recorded. All good that ever was written, taught, or wrought comes from God and human faith in the right. Through divine Love the right government is assimilated, the way pointed out, the process shortened, and the joy of acquiescence consummated. May God sanctify our nation's sorrow in this wise, and His rod and His staff comfort the living as it did the departing. O may His love shield, support, and comfort the chief mourner at the desolate home!
Power of Prayer
My answer to the inquiry, “Why did Christians of every sect in the United States fail in their prayers to save the life of President McKinley,” is briefly this: Insufficient faith or spiritual understanding, and a compound of prayers in which one earnest, tender desire works unconsciously against the modus operandi of another, would prevent the result desired. In the June, 1901, Message to my church in Boston, I refer to the effect of one human desire or belief unwittingly neutralizing another, though both are equally sincere.
In the practice of materia medica, croton oil is not mixed with morphine to remedy dysentery, for those drugs are supposed to possess opposite qualities and so to produce opposite effects. The spirit of the prayer of the righteous heals the sick, but this spirit is of God, and the divine Mind is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever; whereas the human mind is a compound of faith and doubt, of fear and hope, of faith in truth and faith in error. The knowledge that all things are possible to God excludes doubt, but differing human concepts as to the divine power and purpose of infinite Mind, and the so-called power of matter, act as the different properties of drugs are supposed to act — one against the other — and this compound of mind and matter neutralizes itself.
Our lamented President, in his loving acquiescence, believed that his martyrdom was God's way. Hundreds, thousands of others believed the same, and hundreds of thousands who prayed for him feared that the bullet would prove fatal. Even the physicians may have feared this.
These conflicting states of the human mind, of trembling faith, hope, and of fear, evinced a lack of the absolute understanding of God's omnipotence, and thus they prevented the power of absolute Truth from reassuring the mind and through the mind resuscitating the body of the patient.
The divine power and poor human sense — yea, the spirit and the flesh — struggled, and to mortal sense the flesh prevailed. Had prayer so fervently offered possessed no opposing element, and President McKinley's recovery been regarded as wholly contingent on the power of God, — on the power of divine Love to overrule the purposes of hate and the law of Spirit to control matter, — the result would have been scientific, and the patient would have recovered.
St. Paul writes: “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” And the Saviour of man saith: “What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” Human governments maintain the right of the majority to rule. Christian Scientists are yet in a large minority on the subject of divine metaphysics; but they improve the morals and the lives of men, and they heal the sick on the basis that God has all power, is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, supreme over all.
In a certain city the Master “did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief,” — because of the mental counteracting elements, the startled or the unrighteous contradicting minds of mortals. And if he were personally with us to-day, he would rebuke whatever accords not with a full faith and spiritual knowledge of God. He would mightily rebuke a single doubt of the ever-present power of divine Spirit to control all the conditions of man and the universe.
If the skilful surgeon or the faithful M.D. is not dismayed by a fruitless use of the knife or the drug, has not the Christian Scientist with his conscious understanding of omnipotence, in spite of the constant stress of the hindrances previously mentioned, reason for his faith in what is shown him by God's works?
On the Death of Pope Leo XIII., July 20, 1903
The sad, sudden announcement of the decease of Pope Leo XIII., touches the heart and will move the pen of millions. The intellectual, moral, and religious energy of this illustrious pontiff have animated the Church of Rome for one quarter of a century. The august ruler of two hundred and fifty million human beings has now passed through the shadow of death into the great forever. The court of the Vatican mourns him; his relatives shed “the unavailing tear.” He is the loved and lost of many millions. I sympathize with those who mourn, but rejoice in knowing our dear God comforts such with the blessed assurance that life is not lost; its influence remains in the minds of men, and divine Love holds its substance safe in the certainty of immortality. “In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.” (John 1 : 4.)
A Tribute to the Bible
Letter of Thanks for the Gift of a Copy of Martin Luther's Translation into German of the Bible, printed in Nuremberg in 1733
Dear Student: — I am in grateful receipt of your time-worn Bible in German. This Book of books is also the gift of gifts; and kindness in its largest, profoundest sense is goodness. It was kind of you to give it to me. I thank you for it.
Christian Scientists are fishers of men. The Bible is our sea-beaten rock. It guides the fishermen. It stands the storm. It engages the attention and enriches the being of all men.
A Benediction
[Copy of Cablegram]
Countess of Dunmore and Family,
- 55 Lancaster Gate, West, London, England.
Divine Love is your ever-present help. You, I, and mankind have cause to lament the demise of Lord Dunmore; but as the Christian Scientist, the servant of God and man, he still lives, loves, labors.
| Pleasant View, Concord, N. H., | |
| August 31, 1907. |
Hon. Clarence A. Buskirk's Lecture
The able discourse of our “learned judge,” his flash of flight and insight, lays the axe “unto the root of the trees,” and shatters whatever hinders the Science of
| Pleasant View, Concord, N. H., | |
| October 14, 1907. |
“Hear, Israel”
The late lamented Christian Scientist brother and the publisher of my books, Joseph Armstrong, C.S.D., is not dead, neither does he sleep nor rest from his labors in divine Science; and his works do follow him. Evil has no power to harm, to hinder, or to destroy the real spiritual man. He is wiser to-day, healthier and happier, than yesterday. The mortal dream of life, substance, or mind in matter, has been lessened, and the reward of good and punishment of evil and the waking out of his Adam-dream of evil will end in harmony, — evil powerless, and God, good, omnipotent and infinite.
| Pleasant View, Concord, N. H., | |
| December 10, 1907. |
Miss Clara Barton
In the New York American, January 6, 1908, Miss Clara Barton dipped her pen in my heart, and traced its emotions, motives, and object. Then, lifting the curtains of mortal mind, she depicted its rooms, guests, standing and seating capacity, and thereafter gave her discovery to the press. Now if Miss Barton were not a venerable soldier, patriot, philanthropist, moralist, and stateswoman, I should shrink from such salient praise. But in consideration of all that Miss Barton really is, and knowing that she can bear the blows which may follow said description of her soul-visit, I will say. Amen, so be it.
| Pleasant View, Concord, N. H., | |
| January 10, 1908. |
There is No Death
A suppositional gust of evil in this evil world is the dark hour that precedes the dawn. This gust blows away the baubles of belief, for there is in reality no evil, no disease, no death; and the Christian Scientist who believes that he dies, gains a rich blessing of disbelief in death, and a higher realization of heaven.
My beloved Edward A. Kimball, whose clear, correct teaching of Christian Science has been and is an inspiration to the whole field, is here now as veritably as when he visited me a year ago. If we would awaken to this recognition, we should see him here and realize that he never died; thus demonstrating the fundamental truth of Christian Science.
Mrs. Eddy's History
I have not had sufficient interest in the matter to read or to note from others' reading what the enemies of Christian Science are said to be circulating regarding my history, but my friends have read Sibyl Wilbur's book, “The Life of Mary Baker Eddy,” and request the privilege of buying, circulating, and recommending it to the public. I briefly declare that nothing has occurred in my life's experience which, if correctly narrated and understood, could injure me; and not a little is already reported of the good accomplished therein, the self-sacrifice, etc., that has distinguished all my working years.
I thank Miss Wilbur and the Concord Publishing Company for their unselfed labors in placing this book before the public, and hereby say that they have my permission to publish and circulate this work.