MARY BAKER EDDY

Archibald McLellan

There is a story of a certain old-world philosopher who, when it was asked of him, "What constitutes achievement?" answered, "To be able to reply Yes, every evening, to yourself, when you ask, 'Have I done good to any one today?" It would be difficult to find a more practical and efficatious test of the value of a man's life-work, and it would be impossible to find any one to whom it could be more fearlessly applied than Mrs. Eddy. Her whole life, even before she discovered Christian Science, constituted an expression of an intense tenderness for suffering humanity, and as the years added themselves to years, and she learned more and more of divine Life, Truth, and Love, she came to fulfil absolutely the exhortation of Paul to the church at Colosse, "Walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God."

Building in this way for God and not for herself, she built on sure foundations. The Christian Science church which, in the brief space of forty-four years, has literally folded itself around the globe, is in this way founded upon a rock, the rock of divine service. It is a rock against which the storms may beat in vain, for as long as the thoughts of men are turned away from selfish aims, in the endeavor to be able to say, at every close of day, "I have striven to bring healing to the sick, peace to the weary, joy to the sorrowing," they will be learning something of the meaning of consecration.

The depth of man's consecration may be measured by his understanding of divine service. "The song of Christian Science," Mrs. Eddy writes, "is 'Work—work—work—watch and pray' " (Messages to The Mother Church, p.20), and certainly no one has ever put exhortation into practice with more selfess devotion than has she. "I saw before me," she writes on page 226 of Science and Health, alluding to her earlier trials, "the awful conflict, the Red Sea and the wilderness; but I pressed on through faith in God, trusting Truth, the strong deliverer, to guide me into the land of Christian Science, where fetters fall and the rights of man are fully known and acknowledged." Not once, in all those years of conflict, did she flinch, because not once in all those years did she put her own will before the will of God; and so today the Red Sea and the wilderness lie far behind, and the advancing hosts of Christian Science hear the voice of their Leader, repeating the triumphant words of her Master, "Fear not, little flock."

What Mrs. Eddy has won for Christian Science, her followers will maintain and increase, because she has given them a scientific understanding of Love; and, as she herself says, "Where shall the gaze rest but in the unsearchable realm of Mind? We must look where we would walk, and we must act as possessing all power from Him in whom we have our being" (Science and Health, p. 264). Though they stumble and falter as they press forward, press forward they must, because they have realized that the demands of divine Science are imperative, and that the peace of God which they one and all seek can only come to them in proportion to the measure of their performance.

This performance has, however, to be something more than individual, it has to be collective as well. Even in the affairs of this world the proverb declares that in union is strength. If this is true of the effort of discordant minds and temperaments to achieve a human victory, how much more true must it be of that unity in the service of God which is founded on unity of thought and action. Such unity is to be wrought out only in the determination to seek another's good rather than our own, for self-seeking is the seed which would grow into the tree of disintegration.

This is the lesson which Mrs. Eddy has held persistently before her followers, and we can only claim to be her followers in proportion to our obedience to her teaching; and to obey that teaching we have to devote our efforts to the attempt to live in good. "Who lives in good," she writes, on page 4 of "Pulpit and Press." "lives also in God,—lives in all Life, through all space. His is an individual kingdom, his diadem a crown of crowns. His existence is deathless, forever unfolding its eternal Principle. Wait patiently on illimitable Love, the lord and giver of Life. Reflect this Life, and with it cometh the full power of being. 'They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of they house.' "

Archibald McLellan

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