Christian Science -- Controversial literature; Eddy, Mary Baker, 1821-1910
But her acts are consistent. They are always faithful to her, they never
misinterpret her, they are a mirror which always reflects her exactly,
precisely, minutely, unerringly, and always the same, to date, with only
those progressive little natural changes in stature, dress, complexion,
mood, and carriage that mark--exteriorly--the march of the years and
record the accumulations of experience, while--interiorly--through all
this steady drift of evolution the one essential detail, the commanding
detail, the master detail of the make-up remains as it was in the
beginning, suffers no change and can suffer none; the basis of the
character; the temperament, the disposition, that indestructible iron
framework upon which the character is built, and whose shape it must
take, and keep, throughout life. We call it a person's nature.
The man who is born stingy can be taught to give liberally--with his
hands; but not with his heart. The man born kind and compassionate
can have that disposition crushed down out of sight by embittering
experience; but if it were an organ the post-mortem would find it still
in his corpse. The man born ambitious of power and glory may live long
without finding it out, but when the opportunity comes he will know,
will strike for the largest thing within the limit of his chances at the
time-constable, perhaps--and will be glad and proud when he gets it,
and will write home about it. But he will not stop with that start; his
appetite will come again; and by-and-by again, and yet again; and when
he has climbed to police commissioner it will at last begin to dawn upon
him that what his Napoleon soul wants and was born for is something away
higher up--he does not quite know what, but Circumstance and Opportunity
will indicate the direction and he will cut a road through and find out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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