Article September 25, 1909 Issue

TITHES AND TESTIMONIES

WILLIAM S. GILBREATH.

THE first Christian Science meeting which I ever attended was a Wednesday evening meeting, held in a Jewish temple in Chicago, and that one fact was impressive of itself. All through the meeting the interior of the edifice, together with the constant mention of Christ and Christian Science, was creating an impression which is not wholly eradicated as yet, but it was in a measure favorable.

There were some ten persons who testified that evening, and each in his turn was judged by his appearance and manner. I had come to the meeting with a sense of Christian Science as not being true; I came from the camp of the enemy, as it were, so the speakers were judged rather more by their appearance than otherwise. Yet, perhaps this was fortunate, as after all the general impression of the contented and happy and sometimes actually joyous speakers left more of a mark than was at first realized. What they said seemed rather strange; but what left the most lasting impression was the statement quoted from Science and Health that "divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need" (p. 494). These words seemed to stick, and recur at intervals, always with the question, What is divine Love?

This first meeting has always seemed, since then, to have been a far-away, hazy appearance,—rather indistinct, as though one were just emerging from a fog. Coleridge, in his "Religious Musings," tells of a shepherd creeping along in the early morning fog, where all things assume dark and fantastic shapes and forms—

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