The Lectures

At Baltimore, Md.

The genuineness of their belief that pneumonia and bad colds, as well as other diseases, have no real existence was fully demonstrated by the Christian Scientists yesterday, when upward of five hundred of them braved the furious downpour and waded the rushing torrents in the streets to listen to a lecture at Chase's Theatre. The speaker was Captain John F. Linscott, C.S.D.

Captain Linscott is an ex-Union soldier. He became interested in Christian Science some fifteen years ago and was converted to its teachings. He was a pioneer in the Christian Science movement in the West. For ten years before his adoption of the faith he was a friend of and co-worker with the late Miss Frances Willard, the former President of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and was a lecturer in the temperance cause. At present he is First Reader in First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Washington, D.C. He is a scholarly and fluent speaker.

Mr. Edward H. Hammond, C.S.D., First Reader of First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Baltimore, introduced Captain Linscott and presided at the meeting.

The lecture was given under the joint auspices of the First and Second Churches of Christ, Scientist, of Baltimore.—Baltimore (Md.) Sun.

Mr. Hammond's introductory remarks were as follows:—

We have assembled this afternoon to listen to a lecture on Christian Science? Thrice before has the invitation been generously responded to. Now again, it gives us pleasure to invite you to listen to a presentation of our ideas by one of our accredited lecturers.

The Christian Scientist believes in the Scriptural injunction, "Let your light so shine before men." They seek not to appropriate to themselves the great good which they know they possess, but they seek in brotherly love to give out that good, that all mankind may receive its benefits and may rejoice with them and glorify the Creator and Father of us all.

Jesus the Christ, he who spake as never man spake before, gave us an infallible guide by which we might judge all things. "By their fruits," said he, "By their fruits ye shall know them." "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit." By its fruits (good works) does Christian Science ask to be judged, and what have been its fruits since genuine Christian Science came to this community eight years ago? Its fruits, or good demonstrated, are seen in disease healed, health established, sin destroyed, happiness and peace bestowed upon many individuals. It has brought pure joy to many a household and diffused its glad presence among all its inmates. It has awakened many a one among us out of an aimless life and given them a purpose such as they never had before, clear and bright and happifying. It has taken many world-weary, sorrowing men and women, dissipated their gloomy darkness, and left them with a sense of heavenly light and peace which they well knew and felt came from God alone. It has awakened a keen interest in and love for that Holy Book, the Bible, so much misunderstood to-day, as to make that book an object of daily study and daily delight. It has dignified and exalted manhood and womanhood by revealing its inherent nobility and grandeur of character, its gentle sweetness, its strong purposes, heaven-born, its high resolves and capabilities, and brought out the sense, in some degree, of what it means to be a child of God.

If such are the present fruits of Christian Science, how great will be the harvest when it becomes more generally known and practised!

At Wilmington, Del.

Nearly a thousand of Wilmington's representative people and visiting Christian Scientists from Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chester, and West Chester, attended the lecture given in the Opera House yesterday afternoon (December 15) by Carol Norton, C.S.D., of New York City. The lecture was given under the auspices of the local Christian Science Church—First Church of Christ, Scientist, of Wilmington, worshiping at 917 Gilpin Avenue.

The stage was tastefully decorated with a large number of handsome palms and with a beautiful centre-piece, consisting of a large bunch of American Beauty roses, a thoughtful gift from the members of a sister church in Brooklyn, N. Y.

William H. Savery announced as the presiding officer of the afternoon, Norman E. John, C.S.B., formerly of Brooklyn, N. Y., but now First Reader of the Wilmington Church. Mr. John made the following introductory remarks:—

Dear Friends:—Although comparatively a new-comer in your city, I do not feel a stranger among you. Indeed, the tie of a universal friendship is already established when we analyze the common motive that has brought us together this afternoon, the seeking after Truth—the Truth which necessarily must be because of the unceasing yearning of the human heart for it, the truth about God and man, and man's relation to God and to his fellow-men that satisfies. It may be that some of you are satisfied, perfectly satisfied with yourselves, with your environments, with your ability to uplift humanity, to minister to the brokenhearted, to relieve the suffering and the distressed. But are not most of us more keenly associated with the woes and miseries on every hand and the seeming inability to meet them?

A long personal experience of such close association in our home: a mother for twelve years a helpless and bedridden sufferer as a result of sunstroke, sisters broken down with the care of the invalid mother, a father, patient, but aging under the burden of years, which our religion or the loving efforts of physicians failed to relieve, brought us to where we earnestly prayed for those benefits from Him who, in the words of the Psalmist, "forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases."

These blessings came through Christian Science, and in the ten years devoted to sincere study and practice of it, health and God's sunshine of happiness was restored, and an increasing ability to help our brother man has been attained.

The lecture this afternoon will treat of the rise and progress of Christian Science, which has lifted the burdens from thousands of earth's weary children. The lecturer needs no formal introduction to you. This large attendance betokens an appreciative interest in his appearance again, and the truth he so ably presents. We now have the pleasure of listening to Mr. Carol Norton, C.S.D., member of the Christian Science Board of Lectureship of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston.

Mr. Norton spoke at considerable length, concluding his remarks as follows:—

"If simplicity is the highest form of eloquence it is certainly the truest evidence of inspiration and truth. Intense loyalty to the spiritual significance of the Bible, firm adherence to the teachings and example of Jesus Christ, unchanging spiritual attachment to the idea of one God, one brotherhood of man, and the power of the spiritual over the material and physical, these character traits are conspicuous in the life and teachings of Mary Baker Eddy. These virtues of Christian womanhood account for her dignified success as a spiritual teacher, and give her rank as the foremost religious leader of Christian history among women."