قراءة كتاب Pulpit and Press (6th Edition)

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Pulpit and Press (6th Edition)

Pulpit and Press (6th Edition)

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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with his own new name. "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast Thou perfected praise." The resident youthful workers were called BUSY BEES.

Sweet society, precious children, your loving hearts and deft fingers distilled the nectar, and painted the finest flowers in the fabric of this history—even its centre-piece—Mother's Room in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston. The children are destined to witness results which will eclipse oriental dreams. They belong to the twentieth century. By juvenile aid, into the building fund have come $4,460. Ah, children, you are the bulwarks of freedom, the cement of society, the hope of our race!

Brothers of the Christian Science Board of Directors, when your tireless tasks are done—well done—no Delphian lyre could break the full chords of such a rest. May the altar you have built never be shattered in our hearts, but justice, mercy, and love kindle perpetually its fires.

It was well that the brother whose appliances warm this house, warmed also our perishless hope, and nerved its grand fulfilment. Woman, true to her instinct, came to the rescue as sunshine from the clouds; so, when man quibbled over an architectural exigency, a woman climbed with feet and hands to the top of the tower, and helped settle the subject.

After the loss of our late lamented pastor, Rev. D.A. Easton, the church services were maintained by excellent sermons from the editor of the Christian Science Journal (who, with his better half, is a very whole man), together with the Sunday school giving this flock "drink from the river of His pleasures." Oh, glorious hope, and blessed assurance, "it is the Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom." Christians rejoice in secret, they have a bounty hidden from the world. Self-forgetfulness, purity, and love are treasures untold—constant prayers, prophecies, and anointings. Practice, not profession,—goodness, not doctrines,—spiritual understanding, not mere belief, gain the ear and right hand of Omnipotence, and call down blessings infinite. Faith without works is dead. The foundation of enlightened faith is Christ's teachings and practice. It was our Master's self-immolation, his life-giving love, healing both mind and body, that raised the deadened conscience, paralyzed by inactive faith, to a quickened sense of mortal's necessities,—and God's power and purpose to supply them. It was, in the words of the Psalmist, He "who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases."

Rome's fallen fanes and silent Aventine is glory's tomb; her pomp and power lie low in dust. Our land, more favored, had its Pilgrim Fathers. On shores of solitude at Plymouth Rock, they planted a nation's heart,—the rights of conscience, imperishable glory. No dream of avarice or ambition broke their exalted purpose, theirs was the wish to reign in hope's reality—the realm of Love.

Christian Scientists, you have planted your standard on the Rock of Christ, the true, the spiritual idea,—the chief corner-stone in the house of our God. And our Master said: "The stone which the builders rejected the same is become the head of the corner." If you are less appreciated to-day than your forefathers, wait—for if you are as devout as they and more scientific, as progress certainly demands, your plant is immortal. Let us rejoice that chill vicissitudes have not withheld the timely shelter of this house, which descended like day spring from on high.

Divine Presence, breathe Thou thy blessing on every heart in this house. Speak out, oh, soul! This is the new-born of Spirit, this is His redeemed, this, His beloved. May the Kingdom of God within you—with you alway—re-ascending, bear you outward, upward, Heavenward. May the sweet song of silver-throated singers, making melody more real, and the organ's voice as the sound of many waters, and the Word spoken in this sacred Temple dedicated to the ever-present God—mingle with the joy of angels and rehearse your heart's holy intents. May all whose means, energies, and prayers helped erect the Mother Church, find within it home, and Heaven.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE TEXT-BOOK.

The following selections from SCIENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES, pages 560-563, were read from the platform. The impressive stillness of the audience indicated close attention.

Revelation xii, 10-12. And I heard a loud voice saying in Heaven: Now is come salvation, and strength, and the Kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ; for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the Devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.

For victory over a single sin we give thanks, and magnify the Lord of Hosts. Then what shall we say of the mighty conquest over all sin? A louder song, sweeter than has ever before reached high Heaven, now rises clearer and nearer to the great heart of Christ; for the accuser is not there, and Love sends forth her primal and everlasting strain. Self-abnegation—by which we lay down all for Christ, Truth, in our warfare against error—is a rule in Christian Science. This rule clearly interprets God as divine Principle,—as Life, represented by the Father; as Truth, represented by the Son; as Love, represented by the mother. Every mortal, at some period, here or hereafter, must grapple with and overcome the mortal belief in a power opposed to God.

The Scripture, "Thou hast been faithful over a few things; I will make thee ruler over many," is literally fulfilled, when we are conscious of the supremacy of Truth, whereby the nothingness of error is seen, and we know that its nothingness is in proportion to its wickedness. He that touches the hem of Christ's robe, and masters his mortal belief, animality and hate, rejoices in the proof of healing,—in a sweet and certain sense that God is Love. Alas for those who break faith with Divine Science, and fail to strangle the serpent of sin, as well as of sickness! They are dwellers still in the deep darkness of belief. They are in the surging sea of error, not struggling to lift their heads above the drowning wave.

What must the end be? They must eventually expiate their sin through suffering. The sin which one has made his bosom companion, comes back to him at last with accelerated force; for the evil knoweth its time is short. Here the Scriptures declare that evil is temporal, not eternal. The dragon is at last stung to death by his own malice; but how many periods of self-torture it may take to remove all sin and its effects, must depend upon its obduracy.

Revelation xii, 13. And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child.

The march of mind and honest investigation will bring the hour when the people will chain, with fetters of some sort, the growing occultism of this period. The present apathy as to the tendency of certain active yet unseen mental agencies will finally be shocked into another extreme mortal mood,—into human indignation; for one extreme follows another.

Revelation xii, 15, 16. And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood. And the earth helped the woman; and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his

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