Editorial June 12, 1915 Issue

Abundance of Good

Archibald McLellan

As this number of the Sentinel goes to press, the annual meeting of The Mother Church is being held, and Christian Scientists throughout the world will read with rejoicing the report of this meeting, which will appear in our next issue, because more than ever before they have reason to thank God for His abounding goodness. It is well to remember, too, that responsibility for the progress of the movement founded by our revered Leader is shared individually, as well as the rejoicing. In no other religious body, perhaps, are the adherents so closely identified with the teaching that they literally become living epistles, "known and read of all men." They are the witnesses that Christian Science does work for the regeneration of mankind, in that it heals the sick, comforts the sorrowing, and breaks the bondage of sinful habits, even as did the Master, who came that men "might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."

It is indeed "marvelous in our eyes," recalling that only twenty years have passed since the dedication of the original edifice of The Mother Church, how richly has been fulfilled to this church the promise embodied in the passage from the Psalms which Mrs. Eddy took as the text of her dedicatory sermon (Pulpit and Press, p. 1): "They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures." Only the eye of faith, that clear-sighted vision which discerns the promised land beyond the arid wastes of mortal sense, could have then glimpsed the wonderful progress, the abundance of good to be vouchsafed the cause to whose advancement Mrs. Eddy consecrated herself when the present-day efficacy of the Christ-healing whose Principle she had discovered was proven by demonstration to be beyond question.

Mrs. Eddy possessed not only the eye of faith, but an unbounded confidence in God's loving-kindness. Her trust was in "the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy," in a God of love and not of anger, in a God who is good and who knows not evil. The religion she taught was the whole gospel of Christ Jesus, the gospel of healing as well as salvation, and she yearned to bring the healing truth she had discovered within the reach of all mankind. It was for this that she labored unceasingly, that there might be assured to them what we have learned to consider the inalienable rights of man, namely, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," in their fullest sense,—the more abundant life for which Christ Jesus came among men, the "glorious liberty of the children of God," and that enduring happiness which an understanding of omnipotent good alone can ensure.

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