Article July 23, 1932 Issue

"Dear reader"

SARAH F. MILLIGAN

One day a student of Christian Science, feeling the need of assistance in overcoming an inharmonious condition, turned to the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, for help. As she did so, the wistful thought came: Oh, if it were only possible for me to speak for a few minutes with the author of this book! How sure I am that she would appreciate my situation, would sympathize, encourage, and advise me from her own deep experience, and my problem would be solved!

With a sigh of regret that this personal intercourse was not possible, the student picked up the textbook, which fell open at page 253, and there she read these words: "I hope, dear reader, I am leading you into the understanding of your divine rights, your heaven-bestowed harmony,—that, as you read, you see there is no cause (outside of erring, mortal, material sense which is not power) able to make you sick or sinful; and I hope that you are conquering this false sense." The student paused in surprise. "Dear reader"! It seemed as though the words stood out in sharp relief upon the page to challenge her attention. Why, she thought, the reader in this instance is I! She suddenly realized that as she was unquestionably a reader of the book these bracing words were addressed directly to her; that through them she was being urged to understand her own divine rights, her own bestowed harmony, and to conquer false material sense. Eagerly she turned to the Concordance to Science and Health and found several other references which contained this same phrase, "dear reader," followed in each instance by the very encouragement and instruction which she had been craving, and which she was now eagerly accepting.

Certainly, no sufferer could ask for greater evidence of Mrs. Eddy's sympathy and comprehension of the difficulties which seem to beset the human race than is shown in the untiring labor which went into the preparation of the textbook, her unselfish and unsparing toil in order that it might remedy the case of every student, and that it might uncover and correct every phase of error which attempts to trouble human experience. The quotation given above shows her tender solicitude and her deep desire that her words should be healing ones, not by virtue of any personal influence which she might exercise, but through the divine Principle which she so patiently and persistently unfolded.

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