It's early in the morning. Outside my window darkness lingers. It's quiet. These hours are probably the only time when you can walk through the neighborhood and not see the luminescent glow of television. The morning newspaper that calls for attention has not yet arrived. It's a good time for reading and pondering other things.

A few minutes ago I finished reading something that was written eighty-seven years ago. The year was 1902. It's not a year that immediately stands out. The only thing I could at first associate with that year was the end of the Boer War in South Africa.

A little research brought some other events to light. The United States Congress authorized financing and building of the Panama Canal in 1902. Colombia refused to recognize Panama's declaration of independence. The Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy was renewed for another six years. Arthur James Balfour became the British prime minister that year. The Balfour Declaration of later years would play a principal role in the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine.

Technology moved ahead in 1902. Robert Bosch, a German engineer, invented the spark plug. Marie and Pierre Curie determined the properties of radium. A telegraph cable was stretched across the Pacific from California to Hawaii. Portugal still had imperial power and sent troops to Angola to suppress national rebellion.

Also, 1902 saw the publication of Edith Wharton's The Valley of Decision, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, and Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories for children.

Interesting events. They're as varied as they are prophetic of what would still be holding our attention in 1989.

Maybe that's enough history lesson. Just enough to give some perspective and to suggest that 1902 isn't as far away as we might have thought. It certainly isn't distant in terms of the ideas, the spiritual vision, that I am reading about in these early morning hours.

What I had come to was a message sent by the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, to her Church in the summer of that year. She wrote at the opening of her message of the challenge that confronts people who need to see "through the mist of mortal strife." ^{Message to The Mother Church for 1902, p. 2.}

Mrs. Eddy noted the American president's continued efforts to heal lingering hostility from America's Civil War. She referred to events in Cuba, South Africa, and the Far East. She also looked back momentarily to anonymous letters in the past that had contained threats to bomb the halls in which she preached earlier in her career. An understanding of some of the things that were on her mind can be discerned from a single sentence in this 1902 message: "Competition in commerce, deceit in councils, dishonor in nations, dishonesty in trusts, begin with 'Who shall be greatest?'" ^{Ibid., p. 4.}

Her message goes on to talk about profound, self-sacrificing affection that eventually leads up to the understanding of Christ Jesus' life and the nature of God as divine Love. When Jesus' command "Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead" ^{Matt. 8:22.} is obeyed, she said, then healing would result. Insight into what she thought his command meant is clear: "... in other words, Let the world, popularity, pride, and ease concern you less, and love thou. When the full significance of [the Master's] saying is understood, we shall have better practitioners, and Truth will arise in human thought with healing in its wings, regenerating mankind and fulfilling the apostle's saying: 'For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.'" ^{'02., p. 9 .}

This is realism. It's not some promise locked away in the past, like a time capsule buried on the shores of an ancient Galilean Sea. There is continuity to life—either the continuity of God, uniting people and ages in the unfoldment of His law; or, the awful continuity of people unwilling to learn from those who have gone before and who continue to suffer from evils repeated over and over.

Jesus' command "Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead," shows the way out of this hurt. And this way out is what Christian Science is. It reveals man's—our own—true spiritual nature as made by God. And Science shows how we can overcome the terrible lie of carnality that would resist divine Love's power and reality.

The last section of Mrs. Eddy's message in 1902 is titled "Godlikeness." It is about the spiritual destiny of humanity. This relates not only to present students of Christian Science but to the welfare of the world. We need a renewed world, a world spiritually transformed by the revelation of Christ's divine Science. It's a world within reach. It takes place in individual lives as we begin to develop a hunger for the things of God.

I hope that this provides readers with some perspective and sufficient curiosity to get a copy of that message of Mrs. Eddy's from the summer of 1902. ^{The Message for 1902 is found in the compilation of Mrs. Eddy's writings called Prose Works.}

Michael D. Rissler