Nothing except sin, in the students themselves, can separate them from me.
Therefore we should guard thought and action, keeping them in accord with
Christ, and our friendship will surely continue.
The letter of the law of God, separated from its spirit, tends to
demoralize mortals, and must be corrected by a diviner sense of liberty and
light. The spirit of Truth extinguishes false thinking, feeling, and
acting; and falsity must thus decay, ere spiritual sense, affectional
consciousness, and genuine goodness become so apparent as to be well
understood.
After the supreme advent of Truth in the heart, there comes an overwhelming
sense of error's vacuity, of the blunders which arise from wrong
apprehension. The enlightened heart loathes error, and casts it aside; or
else that heart is consciously untrue to the light, faithless to itself and
to others, and so sinks into deeper darkness. Said Jesus: "If the light
that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!" and Shakespeare
puts this pious counsel into a father's mouth:--
This above all: To thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
A realization of the shifting scenes of human happiness, and of the frailty
of mortal anticipations,--such as first led me to the feet of Christian
Science,--seems to be requisite at every stage of advancement. Though our
first lessons are changed, modified, broadened, yet their core is
constantly renewed; as the law of the chord remains unchanged, whether we
are dealing with a simple Latour exercise or with the vast Wagner Trilogy.
A general rule is, that my students should not allow their movements to be
controlled by other students, even if they are teachers and practitioners
of the same blessed faith. The exception to this rule should be very rare.
The widest power and strongest growth have always been attained by those
loyal students who rest on divine Principle for guidance, not on
themselves; and who locate permanently in one section, and adhere to the
orderly methods herein delineated.
At this period my students should locate in large cities, in order to do
the greatest good to the greatest number, and therein abide. The population
of our principal cities is ample to supply many practitioners, teachers,
and preachers with work. This fact interferes in no way with the prosperity
of each worker; rather does it represent an accumulation of power on his
side which promotes the ease and welfare of the workers. Their liberated
capacities of mind enable Christian Scientists to consummate much good or
else evil; therefore their examples either excel or fall short of other
religionists; and they must be found dwelling together in harmony, if even
they compete with ecclesiastical fellowship and friendship.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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