I VALUE Christian Science and revere its Leader above expression in words because of the light which this religious teaching throws upon the chaos, the storm, the stress, the tempest of human life.

It is a sweet calm, a "Peace, be still!" to the sin-tortured breast. I had long prayed, "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me;" but impatience and pride continued, waxed even stronger, as the years and my unavailing prayers went on.

I could not "ascend into the hill of the Lord." My alert but untutored conscience denied that my hands were clean and my heart pure, and St. Paul's cry, "To will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not," echoed in my disappointment, for God did not seem to hear "the voice of my supplications."

As if God, "the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulation,"—could or would withhold from his suppliant child this first and most necessary of His gifts, a humble and a contrite heart!

Then Christian Science came and illumined the teaching of Jesus. When the Jews railed at him: "How long dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly," he answered them, "I told you, and ye believed not: the works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me."

I was led to see that what is true of the human race, is true of each individual in that race; that as the race has had its barbaric, semi-barbaric, half-civilized, and civilized ages, so each one of us has a corresponding stage of development, and we but soften these divisions when we call them the physical or material, the mental or intellectual, the moral or spiritual.

I saw that as the Jews on their material plane, failed to recognize in Jesus the majestic control of Mind, because their untaught hearts demanded a king whose coming would break the yoke of Rome and restore their tottering kingdom; so within my breast was waging that same elemental war, which knew no abiding peace, because forever "the carnal mind is enmity against God." This mind, "enthroned in the gorgeousness of matter," lifted "its voice with the arrogance of reality" (Science and Health, p. 252), wanting only what the senses could grasp. As the Jews saw only the material man, and not the second man, the Lord from heaven, so I, blinded by "the will, or sensuous reason of the human mind" (Science and Health, p. 111), was unable to see His mercy in the heavens, His faithfulness in the clouds.

My untaught conscience, and the clamorous suggestions of my own will would not comprehend a humble and a contrite heart.

For years I had tried to assure myself of my spiritual birthright, that my mind was in accord with its maker; but the weightiest words, the profoundest petitions, could not convince my longing heart that it was at one with God.

Very gently, Christian Science taught me that only such works as I could do in my Father's name, would prove to me that I and my Father are one. That as Jesus said. "I and my Father are one," so each and every son of man must follow him, having no will but to do the will of Him that sent him, in the "ministry of reconciliation," even as it was given to Jesus to reconcile the hearts of his brethren to that "good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."

Then pride, impatience, ambition, all that had chafed the heart, began to disappear as I learned the clear and simple meaning of the atonement as given in our text-book.

The humble and the contrite heart is ours, has always been ours; in spite of the misbeliefs which fail to recognize everything except grandeur and arrogance in man. Man in the image and likeness of God; "the idea, or reflection, of Spirit" (Science and Health, p. 478). How false is the human consciousness which has hid these truths of being from us, to be uncovered by our Leader,—re-covered in all their beauty, as the "scientific eternal consciousness of being" (Science and Health, p. 263) —"we shall also bear the image of the heavenly."

This is the atonement, that man shall become conscious, through his works, of his oneness with his Father. This is his salvation which he must work out, in spite of "trembling and fear," to realize at-one-ment with the Father, through obedience; denying every material sense, the intellectuality of the Sanhedrim's pride of power, the personality of the Pharisees' hypocrisy and self-righteousness, the materiality of the Sadducees' disbelief in the resurrection and the Life eternal.

Even human wisdom bids us work out this obedience in that dignity of silence with which Jesus answered the Jews, the silence of divine Love perfected in works rather than in the clangor of words.

Hymn 16 of our Hymnal recalls these lines from Longfellow's "New England Tragedies," which I learned long ago, to still my heart, and which have been illumined, for me, by the new light of Science.

In such silence, shall we find the atonement—the heart's sweet consciousness of oneness with the Father.

I might cite positive proofs of this power of Truth, realized in the healing of sin,—for we mortals are so pitiably sin-sack!—but these pages are filled with the records of the atonement, wrought in scientific healing.

May we not all go forth as ambassadors for Christ, in the ministry of the reconciliation, not only with valiant speech, but with clean hands and a pure heart, in sure deeds of mercy and of comfort, "that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God." Our Leader has taught us that this is the true interpretation of Christ's atonement, the healing work of Truth through a humble and a contrite heart.

The tempest will then be stilled, and we shall know that "the divine understanding reigns, is all, and there is no other consciousness" (Science and Health, p. 536).

Thus our works, "humble in degree to-day, yet perfect in their kind," shall unfold till every Son of God shall say, with the Christ, "It is finished!" "I and my Father are one."