Article August 18, 1917 Issue

The Loving Message

MATTIE TROY CLENDINEN

Thanksgiving day, 1916, marked the twenty-seventh anniversary of the home-coming of a mother who had left her loved ones and gone to a city about two hundred miles distant, in search of some means to alleviate her suffering of both mind and body. She had come back bringing into the writer's girlhood home Christian Science, the wonderful message of Truth. Our mother felt she had indeed found the "pearl of great price," and although it was a stranger within our gates, we took it in, little knowing the blessings it was holding in store for us through all the years to come.

Every member of the household accepted this message without a doubt as to its truth. We beheld with wonder and joy the beautiful demonstrations over discord, both mental and physical, wrought through the application of the slight understanding of divine Truth possessed by our mother. Surely at that time it could be said by her, God's grace is all sufficient. Well does the writer recall the words of our Leader so often voiced by this dear one, "Let not the flesh, but the Spirit, be represented in me" (Science and Health, p. 33), and it has taken all these years for her to be able to comprehend even in a measure the depth of meaning contained therein, words so necessary for us to understand and live before we can do the work required in Christian Science. Only through much prayer, watchfulness, self-denial, and humility has she been able to help others as she has been helped through this truth.

From the time this message came into the home to the present, the writer has found Christian Science to be her all-sufficient help, carrying her over the rough places in safety. We know it is just and right for man to manifest freedom from all physical discord, for did not Jesus come healing the sick? But he also came to cast out sin, and what he did we are to do. Our Leader tells us that the healing of disease is only the bugle call to come up higher. (See Rudimental Divine Science, p. 2.) The mottoes hanging before our mental gaze on the right hand and on the left should bear these inspiring words of Paul, so often pondered by us: "I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ" (to see nothing but the perfect man expressed in those with whom we come in contact); "Henceforth know we no man after the flesh" (fleshly mind); "Come out from among them [all material beliefs], and be ye separate."

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