Article November 8, 1919 ISSUE

"Before they call"

REUBEN POGSON

IN "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy says (p. 559), "The 'still, small voice' of scientific thought reaches over continent and ocean to the globe's remotest bound." Jesus demonstrated the same truth when he caused the boat to be immediately at the other side of the lake. Yet even the annihilation of space seems less mysterious to the human mind than does the obliteration of time, notwithstanding the fact that time annihilation is implied in the Scriptural statement, "Before they call, I will answer." If man is the image and likeness of God, then to him as to God time must be nonexistent. Was it not to this state of spiritual understanding that the angel was referring when he sware "that there should be time no longer"? Undoubtedly we are thinking that infinite good can be limited when we allow space or time to act as a barrier or gulf between our prayer and its answer.

Sometimes we are inclined to think that our prayers are not fully answered. This is often because we do not associate some blessing with the prayer which was offered. We have allowed the time sense to separate us from the unity and ever presence of all that is good. The writer's providential avoidance of disaster on board a vessel which was torpedoed during the last few weeks of the war brought home the far-reaching effect of the mental work for the church, done by himself and others. After over seventeen years of continual attendance at Christian Science services it became his duty to go on active service in the British Army. For three months he never saw a Christian Science church, society, or even a Christian Scientist. This in addition to the hardships of army life in a country where antagonism, open and concealed, to the British Army was generally manifest, made him at times wonder when he should have the joy of attending a Christian Science service again and feel that sense of freedom which seems stifled in an atmosphere of opposition. There remained, however, this joy,—that he could mentally work for the Church of Christ, Scientist, and enjoy that spiritual fellowship of the household of Principle which Christian Science had revealed to him. Mental work for the revealing of the glory and prosperity of the church was done every day, sometimes in a quiet hayfield in a few moments' respite from duty; sometimes in a sentry box in the middle of the night midst darkness, desolation, and torrential rain; sometimes—and this most often—sitting up in the night in the hut when the rest of the men were asleep.

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