Books by Mary Baker Eddy

Message for 1901, by Mary Baker Eddy
page 498

Message for 1901, by Mary Baker Eddy

   Beloved brethren, to-day I extend my heart-and-hand-fellowship
to the faithful, to those whose hearts
have been beating through the mental avenues of mankind
for God and humanity; and rest assured you can
never lack God's outstretched arm so long as you are in
His service. Our first communion in the new century
finds Christian Science more extended, more rapidly
advancing, better appreciated, than ever before, and nearer
the whole world's acceptance.
   To-day you meet to commemorate in unity the life of
our Lord, and to rise higher and still higher in the individual
consciousness most essential to your growth and
usefulness; to add to your treasures of thought the great
realities of being, which constitute mental and physical
perfection. The baptism of the Spirit, and the refreshment
and invigoration of the human in communion with
the Divine, have brought you hither.
   All that is true is a sort of necessity, a portion of the
primal reality of things. Truth comes from a deep sincerity
that must always characterize heroic hearts; it is
the better side of man's nature developing itself.
   As Christian Scientists you seek to define God to your
own consciousness by feeling and applying the nature and
practical possibilities of divine Love: to gain the absolute

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and supreme certainty that Christianity is now what Christ
Jesus taught and demonstrated - health, holiness,
immortality. The highest spiritual Christianity in individual
lives is indispensable to the acquiring of greater power in
the perfected Science of healing all manner of diseases.
   We know the healing standard of Christian Science was
and is traduced by trying to put into the old garment the
new-old cloth of Christian healing. To attempt to twist
the fatal magnetic element of human will into harmony
with divine power, or to substitute good words for good
deeds, a fair seeming for right being, may suit the weak or
the worldly who find the standard of Christ's healing too
high for them. Absolute certainty in the practice of divine
metaphysics constitutes its utility, since it has a divine and
demonstrable Principle and rule - if some fall short of
Truth, others will attain it, and these are they who will
adhere to it. The feverish pride of sects and systems is
the death's-head at the feast of Love, but Christianity is
ever storming sin in its citadels, blessing the poor in spirit
and keeping peace with God.
   What Jesus' disciples of old experienced, his followers
of to-day will prove, namely, that a departure from the
direct line in Christ costs a return under difficulties; darkness,
doubt, and unrequited toil will beset all their returning
footsteps. Only a firm foundation in Truth can give
a fearless wing and a sure reward.
   The history of Christian Science explains its rapid
growth. In my church of over twenty-one thousand six
hundred and thirty-one communicants (two thousand four
hundred and ninety-six of whom have been added since

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last November) there spring spontaneously the higher hope,
and increasing virtue, fervor, and fidelity. The special
benediction of our Father-Mother God rests upon this
hour: "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute
you, and shall say all manner of evil against you
falsely, for my sake."

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