If one asks me, Is my concept of you right? I reply, The human concept is always imperfect; relinquish your human concept of me, or of any one, and find the divine, and you have gained the right one—and never until then. People [10] give me too much attention of the misguided, fallible sort, and this misrepresents one through malice or ignorance. My brother was a manufacturer; and one day a work- man in his mills, a practical joker, set a man who applied for work, in the overseer’s absence, to pour a bucket of [15] water every ten minutes on the regulator. When my brother returned and saw it, he said to the jester, “You must pay that man.” Some people try to tend folks, as if they should steer the regulator of mankind. God makes _us_ pay for tending the action that He adjusts. [20] The regulator is governed by the principle that makes the machinery work rightly; and because it _is_ thus gov- erned, the folly of tending it is no mere jest. The divine Principle carries on His harmony. Now turn from the metaphor of the mill to the Mother’s [25] four thousand children, most of whom, at about three years of scientific age, set up housekeeping alone. Certain students, being too much interested in themselves to think of helping others, go their way. They do not love Mother, but pretend to; they constantly go to her for help, interrupt [30] the home-harmony, criticise and disobey her; then “return to their vomit,”—world worship, pleasure seeking, and [Page 354.] sense indulgence,—meantime declaring they “never dis- [1] obey 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, [5] and it has the grandeur of the loyal, self-forgetful, faith- ful 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 [10] to Truth, and evil to good, and sense seams 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, [15] 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 move- ment of body and soul in accord with God. Instead of relying on the Principle of all that really [20] exists,—to govern His own creation,—self-conceit, igno- rance, and pride would regulate God’s action. Expe- rience 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. [25]