"When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth...

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"When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son," the Bible tells us. When the realization of the insufficiency of Jewish rites and statutes dawned upon the Hebrew people, and a yearning after the consciousness of God's child and his all-loving, all-powerful Principle, Love, reached its culmination, there was found an instrument prepared by the all-loving Father, which in purity received the thought emanating from Him and was fitted to bring it into expression. Jesus was born of a virgin, and thus the way to the Father opened up to humanity.

This most significant word of Paul has been fulfilled time and again in the destiny of nations. The appearing of great, regenerating ideas has always taken place "when the fulness of the time was come." God's hour and His ways are not to be measured according to small human standards, neither has God's instrument ever been chosen in accordance with human prudence. "When the fulness of the time was come," Luther appeared,—the simple, meek, God-reliant miner's son from Thuringia, and brought religious freedom to thought constrained by priestly garments. The Bible was given to the German people with all its wealth of truth and inspiration, and the Reformation advanced through the lands where thought had matured and consequently there was readiness to receive it.

Again: "When the fulness of the time was come,"—when the time of seeking and yearning after full, complete consecration to God was fulfilled,—there was once more an instrument prepared by Him. The treasures which Jesus brought to men, and which through human opinions, church domination, worldly wisdom, and mental sluggishness had, so to speak, been buried under dust and rubbish, were once more brought to light. It was shown that Christianity is not like a garment which has become worn during the centuries, but that the realization of Jesus' command, "Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils," with which the disciples and early Christians complied and which they carried out with God-given authority, is not a lost power but a very present fact, as present as God and His living Word. Christian Science has come to prove that the eternal Christ, immortal Truth, heals, cleanses, and liberates today as in Jesus' time, and in this instance again God chose His instrument, though not according to the ways of the world. A loving, pure woman was illumined by God. Mary Baker Eddy was a seeker after God from earliest childhood, but it was not until she grew into mature womanhood, when prostrated by an accident and considered by family and physicians to be on the brink of the grave, that through the reading of the Bible she awoke to the fact that God was her life, the healing Christ her present Redeemer. Impelled by love for all mankind, she did not keep this experience to herself, but turned it into a source of blessings for humanity.

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