Page:Miscellaneous Writings.djvu/204

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178
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS

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.