Article June 25, 1921 Issue

Confidence

OSKAR SEITZ

WHEN I first found Christian Science and caught a glimpse of this glorious teaching, when I first began to realize that I was standing at the portal of infinity, I went through the experience Peter must have gone through when he saw his beloved Master walk over the waves. Enthusiasm, zeal, and blind faith lifted me up, and it seemed as if I walked over the waves of mortal mind. At this time I had many demonstrations which to-day are still a joy and an incentive. But soon there arose a storm, and from my lips too there came the cry: Save, Lord, or I perish. Then it became clear to me that the works which our Master had done could only be accomplished in a correct and scientific way, by gaining an understanding of the spiritual facts which Jesus revealed and which Mary Baker Eddy has explained in Christian Science to us so clearly that every one who honestly seeks can find. Patient study of the Lesson-Sermon and of Der Herold der Christian Science as well as a search in Mrs. Eddy's works brought good results. I realized for myself and others the effects of knowing the truth, but for a long time I felt very insecure in this new world of Spirit. Although I knew that Christian Science is applicable under every condition, I often doubted the result of my own work, and feared a relapse as soon as I would stop working. In the night I would sometimes get up and continue "treatment," thinking that I had not done my full duty. Then one day my eyes were opened. This was when I read the passage in Isaiah: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither ... so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."

Even before I knew of Christian Science this beautiful Bible passage had always appealed to me, and I thought that no poet could speak in a more powerful and a more beautiful way than did this Jewish prophet. As I read those words with the understanding gained through Christian Science they became as a revelation. "God's thoughts," writes Mrs. Eddy on page 286 of our textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," "are perfect and eternal, are substance and Life." And on page 581 she defines angels thus: "God's thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect; the inspiration of goodness, purity, and immortality, counteracting all evil, sensuality, and mortality." They are the "words" that come out of His mouth. What, then, were the declarations of Truth, if not divine thoughts, and therefore God's thoughts?

Were not the passages out of our textbook, with which I confronted mortal sense, angels? Are they not a divine prophecy? Indeed they are, for the whole of our textbook is the result of spiritual inspiration, "counteracting all evil, sensuality, and mortality." Every true thought is a divine thought and has divine power to deliver mankind from sin, disease, and death, and to annihilate all inharmony.

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"Time and medication"
June 25, 1921
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