  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 [25] 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 home- sick for heaven. In my long journeyings I have met [30] one who comes from the place of my own sojourning [1] for many years,—the Congregational Church. He is a graduate of Bowdoin College and of Andover The- ological School. He has left his old church, as I did, from a yearning of the heart; because he was not sat- [5] isfied 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 [10] 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 [15] 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— [20] “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 [25] 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, [30] and the new, living, impersonal Christ-thought that has been given to the world to-day. The old churches are saying, “He is not here;” and, [1] “Who shall roll away the stone?” The stone has been rolled away by human suffer- ing. The first rightful desire in the hour of loss, when believing we have lost sight of Truth, is to know where [5] 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 [10] 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.” [15] Can we say this to-day? Have we left the conscious- ness of sickness and sin for that of health and holiness? What is it that seems a stone between us and the resurrection morning? [20] It is the belief of mind in matter. We can only come into the spiritual resurrection by quitting the old con- sciousness of Soul in sense. |
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