sense indulgence, — meantime declaring they “never disobey Mother”! It exceeds my conception of human nature. Sin in its very nature is marvellous! Who but a moral idiot, sanguine of success in sin, can steal, and lie and lie, and lead the innocent to doom? History needs it, and it has the grandeur of the loyal, self-forgetful, faithful Christian Scientists to overbalance this foul stuff.
When the Mother's love can no longer promote peace in the family, wisdom is not “justified of her children.” When depraved reason is preferred to revelation, error to Truth, and evil to good, and sense seems sounder than Soul, the children are tending the regulator; they are indeed losing the knowledge of the divine Principle and rules of Christian Science, whose fruits prove the nature of their source. A little more grace, a motive made pure, a few truths tenderly told, a heart softened, a character subdued, a life consecrated, would restore the right action of the mental mechanism, and make manifest the movement of body and soul in accord with God.
Instead of relying on the Principle of all that really exists, — to govern His own creation, — self-conceit, ignorance, and pride would regulate God's action. Experience shows that humility is the first step in Christian Science, wherein all is controlled, not by man or laws material, but by wisdom, Truth, and Love.
Go gaze on the eagle, his eye on the sun,
Fast gathering strength for a flight well begun,
As rising he rests in a liberty higher
Than genius inflated with worldly desire.
No tear dims his eye, nor his pinions lose power
To gaze on the lark in her emerald bower —
Whenever he soareth to fashion his nest,
No vision more bright than the dream in his breast.
