Article March 12, 1904 Issue

"Who Did Sin?"

J. W. WATKINS.

About the time I became interested in Christian Science I was employed in an office where my patience was sorely tried and my understanding put to a severe test. The chief of the office was a person who, to human sense, was very irritable, fault—finding, and unkindly critical. No one in the office seemed to be able to perform any duties in a manner satisfactory to him. His language was severe and inconsiderate. To me this was a new experience and I often felt that I must resign my position, as I thought I could not endure it much longer; but I resolved not to retreat in the face of the enemy.

One evening my wife suggested that I take the matter up mentally and overcome the sense of inharmony. I at once began working, as best I could, to realize that man as God's child could not be made a channel through which a sense of error could manifest itself. Weeks and months passed without change of condition. At last I recalled a passage in Science and Health, p. 454, which reads, "Human hate has no legitimate mandate and no kingdom. Love is enthroned." I at once said to myself, and with great satisfaction, "This applies exactly to that other fellow," and I worked with renewed vigor, some weeks longer. One day it dawned upon my consciousness that the passage above quoted might be for me and not for the "other fellow." Self—examination revealed the fact that I was not entertaining a surplus stock of love, and I went to work to correct my own thoughts,—to clean my own windows and set my own house in order.

Not long after, the person referred to was absent from the office for some days, and I learned that he was sick, as was frequently the case. The day that he returned to the office I met him and spoke to him pleasantly, and asked if he had been suffering with a cold. He replied very pleasantly, "Oh, no; I have indigestion very severely." I asked him what he had been trying for it. "I have tried everything," was his reply. I said that he could not have tried Christian Science, or he would not be suffering so. I talked with him a few minutes, and he said he would read some of our literature. I sent him a Journal, and a few days after he came to my desk and said with a pleasant smile, that he had not found time to read the Journal I sent him, and did not think he needed it, as he was all right; and he had no more attacks of indigestion.

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