Books by Mary Baker Eddy

EASTER SERVICES
page 110

EASTER SERVICES

The editor of The Christian Science Journal said that
at three o'clock, the hour for the church service proper,
the pastor, Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy, accompanied
by Rev. D. A. Easton, who was announced to preach
the sermon, came on the platform. The pastor introduced
Mr. Easton as follows: -
Friends: - The homesick traveller in foreign lands
greets with joy a familiar face. I am constantly homesick
for heaven. In my long journeyings I have met

MISC 178

one who comes from the place of my own sojourning
for many years, - the Congregational Church. He is
a graduate of Bowdoin College and of Andover Theological
School. He has left his old church, as I did,
from a yearning of the heart; because he was not satisfied
with a manlike God, but wanted to become a God-like
man. He found that the new wine could not be
put into old bottles without bursting them, and he came
to us.
   Mr. Easton then delivered an interesting discourse
from the text, "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek
those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the
right hand of God" (Col. iii. 1), which he prefaced by
saying: -
   "I think it was about a year ago that I strayed into
this hall, a stranger, and wondered what sort of people
you were, and of what you were worshippers. If any
one had said to me that to-day I should stand before
you to preach a sermon on Christian Science, I should
have replied, 'Much learning' - or something else -
'hath made thee mad.' If I had not found Christian
Science a new gospel, I should not be standing before you:
if I had not found it truth, I could not have stood up
again to preach, here or elsewhere."
   At the conclusion of the sermon, the pastor again came
forward, and added the following: -
   My friends, I wished to be excused from speaking
to-day, but will yield to circumstances. In the flesh, we
are as a partition wall between the old and the new;
between the old religion in which we have been educated,
and the new, living, impersonal Christ-thought that has
been given to the world to-day.

MISC 179

   The old churches are saying, "He is not here;" and,
"Who shall roll away the stone?"
   The stone has been rolled away by human
suffering. The first rightful desire in the hour of loss, when
believing we have lost sight of Truth, is to know where
He is laid. This appeal resolves itself into these
questions: -
   Is our consciousness in matter or in God? Have we
any other consciousness than that of good? If we have,
He is saying to us to-day, "Adam, where art thou?" We
are wrong if our consciousness is in sin, sickness, and
death. This is the old consciousness.
   In the new religion the teaching is, "He is not here;
Truth is not in matter; he is risen; Truth has become
more to us, - more true, more spiritual."
   Can we say this to-day? Have we left the consciousness
of sickness and sin for that of health and
holiness?
   What is it that seems a stone between us and the
resurrection morning?
   It is the belief of mind in matter. We can only come
into the spiritual resurrection by quitting the old consciousness
of Soul in sense.
   These flowers are floral apostles. God does all this
through His followers; and He made every flower in
Mind before it sprang from the earth: yet we look into
matter and the earth to give us these smiles of God!

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