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Show THE CITIZEN 12 less, until finally she began to get hold of the light of God in its eternal activity, so that she was able to heal others even as she had been healed, and thus she learned to know God even better. She found herself able to tell others how to heal as she had been healed, and then her revelation fulfilled itself when it came to her so clearly that she .was able to put it down in words that you and I can grasp and understand and comprehend, so that as we take what she said and go to our Bible with it, we, too, find the spirit of the Word of God which enables us to worship Him in spirit and in truth, and so fulfill His law. So we know by results that the revelation came to Mrs. Eddy and through her to the whole world. Impartiality of Truth. Please do not think that we Christian Scientists imagine that we have a peculiarly close position relative to God. Do not think for a moment that we are indicating or mean to indicate that we think God loves us better than He does anybody else. He does not. His attitude towards all His children is the same, and never changes. Truth is irresistible, irrefutable, and irreversible and is equally applicable by all. The only distinction to the human &nse of things might be illustrated in the difference between perhaps a dozen students in a classroom in school. One grasps the fundamentals, the law, the progression and the rule, and so brings out a successful answer to his problem. Another does not grasp it so well, and fails to . get a complete, correct answer. The others have not grasped it at all, and they do not get any answer that shows any intelligent knowledge of the subject whatever. But the principle is there, and when one uses it correctly, he finds himself in direct line, and he is able to solve the problem and to get the right answer. So it is just a question, my dear friends, of service. It is a question of using what you have or abusing it, or turning your back upon it. We find that it is essentially true that we have departed far from God. I always wondered why it seemed to be that there began in the year 300 such retrogression from the use of the Word of God for the solving of all problems. But when I learned, as I did in my trip in Europe, that Constantine, crowning also to him a work book. To the business man it is a business book. To the housekeeper it is a book of rules telling how to keep house comfortably, pleasantly, and harmoniously. .To the child in school it is the textbook which teaches that child how to think. And to every man, woman, and child on earth it is the foundation of right thinking wherein we may find our freedom. Christian Science is a field for everybody on the face of the earth upon which to get busy and work out his own salvation. We have not been accustomed to think that the laity should work particularly hard on religious subjects, because a man has sometimes thought that he was a pretty good Christian if he kept a pew in church, saw that his family attended regularly and he himself occasionally when the opportunity seemed ripe. He would go and he would listen to the result of another mans hard labor and work, and come away and nod his head, "That was a pretty good talk, and would feel that he had done his part of the religious work until he again associated himself with other members of his church in its meetings. But, my dear friends, there is a great difference between creed and religion. Religion demands of us that we shall w'ork constantly and continuously to think right, and consequently to do right. Well, one might say, it is pretty hard work to be a Christian Scientist. Consider, however, your human experiences, and all of the human differences between persons, and you will find it is pretty hard work not to be one. The fact is, that you have had enough trouble in the experience you have had, and you would like to change it if you could. We have all had that suggestion. No, it is not hard to be a Christian Scientist, not as hard as it is not to be one. Where do you start to be a Chris- With every right tian Scientist? thought you think. That is your start. Therein is to be found your progress, and in the successful attitude of always thinking right do you find the key of heaven. You have had the thought that heaven is afar off. You have deemed it to be afar off, and yet, every time you use the Lord's Prayer, what do you pray? Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Have you meant it? When you talk about Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven, have you meant it? Have you ever stopped to think whether you meant it or not? Has it ever meant to you that you are praying that there should come unto you and through you and in you such a consecrated knowledge of God that you would stop thinking and doing wrong, and think and do the right and that that would bring what has been termed the millennium here, in other words, the kingdom of God and His righteousness on earth as it is in heaven? Our Lord and Master saw the necessity for it, so he taught us all to pray that prayer, and he did not mean that we should pray for it to come at some other time. One thing we must learn is to know that we are not praying for a kingdom that is yet to come, but we are praying for that knowledge of God which brings that kingdom into our midst in proportion to our right think- himself as the vicegerent of God on earth, never became a Christian, never laid down his false gods, and that the Christian people of that day did not ask him to, did not expect him to, but followed him just because he was a successful fighter in war, I could understand tlien why at that time and period the Christian people began to find themselves incapable of understanding the law of God sufficiently to make it operative in the meeting of their necessities and desires. One thing you may rest assured of. Your application of Christian Science must be honest from the inside out. It does not make much difference what you say if your speech is not the manifestation of what you have accomplished, what you know you are capable of accomplishing, when you are obedient to the Bible command wherein it is said unto us, "Let this mind be in you, which was also in You see that it reChrist Jesus. quires something of us in order that we may get this Mind of Christ, because the Bible says, "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ And so it requires and deJesus. mands of us that our human theory and opinion shall be set aside, ana that we shall no longer glory in what we call diversity of opinion, but that we shall glory in the single purpose which brings out the one Truth, the one God, and the one Christ. The Bible the Guide. The Bible to the Christian Scientist is not essentially a church book. Of course, he uses it in church but it is f ing. - Christian Science and Prayer. But it has been said that Christian Scientists do not pray. Why, the whole activity of the Christian Science movement is prayer. It is entirely You Bible says the know that prayer. that we are to pray without ceasing. Now, you ask some Christian of the orthodox churches: Do you know that the Bible says that you are to pray without ceasing? And he will say: Yes. Then you say to him: "Do do And he will say: Why, it? you no, of course I dont, I have to take care of my house, I have to take care of my business, to keep my books, to do my stenographic work; I have all these things to do and I could not do them if I prayed all the time. I want to say that Christian Science teaches us beyond peradventure that we must pray without ceasing, and that there is no such thing as the possibility of true success unless it is predicated upon constant prayer. The trouble is that we have a wrong conception of what constitutes prayer. We have thought prayer to be simply a petition to God to do this or that, or to give this or that, or to take away this or that. To be sure, the Bible says that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, without variableness or shadow of turning. Nevertheless, in the human misapprehension which surrounds the term prayer, it has been constant appeal to the Unchangeable to become the very essence of changeableness. Now, just to illustrate it, let me ask, have we ever thought how strange it would sound if we were suddenly endowed with the power to hear all of the petitions called prayer which are sent up to God at the same time? For instance, here are two perfectly sincere Christian business men in the same city. Their stores are on the same street in the same block and they are side by side. One sells and rubbers and the other sells spring bonnets. One man prays for rain, and the other prays for fair weather, and what is God going to do? That is not the kind of prayer that Jesus used at the tomb of Lazarus. He did not ask God if God were willing that Lazar.us should live. He simply said, Father, I thank thee and then on the foundation of this thanks unto God he turned to the tomb un-brell- as and said: and Lazarus Now, the that there is Lazarus, come forth; came forth. greatest book of prayer in the whole Bible is the book of Psalms. We all know that David had been wonderfully blessed; that he had more opportunities to serve God than it seemed possible for a human being to have; then he began to be pretty proud of David; he began to think that David was doing a lot of these things instead of Gods doing them, and the result was that he began to slip backward and downward until he finally got down into the mud and mire of doing everything that he ought not to do and leaving undone the things that he ought to have done. We never get so far down in the mud and mire of disloyalty to God but that if we turn in the right direction we shall find God standing by our side giving us, in proportion to our willingness to accept the Christ-minrelief and surcease from the discord which has environed us. And so in the very depths of his wretchedness and misery, David found God again. If we will take the Psalms we shall see how full they are of praise, how David glorifies God, how he recognizes that all there is in the manifestation of God in His great consideration even for the sons of men in their striving to work out their salvation. To be sure, once in a while we find a psalm that is pretty doleful that is the human side of David but he always gets hold of it in the next psalm and his prayer then is more joyful than ever. So it shows that he recognized that thanksgiving unto God is real prayer; and that indicates to us that there is nothing so infinitesimal in our daily occupation that we may not praise God for it. I want to tell you it may not interest the gentlemen much, but it will interest the ladies that we can praise God in washing dishes. How? By being happy that you have the dishes to wash and the ability to wash them, rather than getting mad because you have to do it. In every human experience we can praise God, because every blessing flows from Him. He is the Father of light, and every good and d, perfect gift cometh out from His children, and for the serJ the sons of men when they are to use them. Christian Science and Busin We have heard a great deal! discord surrounding us, ihat in the midst of the greatest fi! depression the world as a wo? known in history. Everybody u ried that is, no, not everybody everybody who is not a Christiai entist is worried, and perhaps of the Christian Scientists are because we find ourselves at looking on the doleful side of th Some person maybe asks the Do you use your religi0 tion: the solution of your financial lems? We most assuredly do not? why Well, then, some oi you says that the Bible says tha Son of man had not a place to h head. Yes, it does say that, ando basis of that we have been ti from generation to generation Jesus was poor beyond the exprt of words. But if we are thong and become familiar with the tions and circumstances of the a which he lived, we shall see th simply made reference to the that like all religious teachers of time, he wandered continually village to hamlet, doing the voi a man of God as he saw it, and ing peacefully with some true bel wherever the shades of night him; because the Bible tells us at the time he made that state he was clad in a seamless gan the most expensive form of do that they knew in those days, l Why, the riches of Jesus were he human computation or expressioi made the greatest demonstratio provision that the world has known anything about. I am to tell you about it, and you recognize it when I begin to of it. It was at the time when Jesus i I i as usual discoursing to the people one of the disciples came up to and said in substance: Master collector for Caesars tribute without and wants his money." what did Jesus do? Did he the concourse of people and g the disciples together to & amongst them they might be raise the pittance required so Jesus might go on raising the Isnt it strange that the incong of the two beliefs has never app to us as it does now? This is dii all i he did. He did not dismiss the p at all. He just stopped for a me and said to one of his disci Peter, you go down and cast in line and the first fish that yon open its mouth and there you vii a piece of money which will 1) Caesars tribute. t in Kansas City said one time she was glad I spoke because she had always though! that passage meant that Jesn' Peter to go down and fish, and Peter went down and fishedto enough to get fish enough s up to town and sell for money to meet the demand of Caesar: A lady ot lector. m Well, as a matter of fact, it any other interpretation to we come to know th.- spirit Word as Christian Science &lV us? A person asks a Christian ist: "Do you believe that tha AW actually happened? There is no questipn ihout soever. It fs absolute Pr00 when there is a time 'vhenJJ 0 J to be called upon to aB the demand of owing iu save to love one another, that take the word of Go.i and wherewithal to do it i wefl and cling to Him everlasting What do you say? You your money will do jus I suchtn a thing, just so much, and - . |