Easter Services

         The editor of The Christian Science Journal said that
         at three o’clock, the hour for the church service proper,
         the pastor, Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy, accompanied
25    by Rev. D. A. Easton, who was announced to preach
         the sermon, came on the platform. The pastor introduced
         Mr. Easton as follows:—

         Friends:—The homesick traveller in foreign lands
         greets with joy a familiar face. I am constantly home-
30    sick for heaven. In my long journeyings I have met

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1      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 The-
         ological School. He has left his old church, as I did,
5      from a yearning of the heart; because he was not sat-
         isfied 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.

10    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:—

15    “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
20    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.”

25    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;
30    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.

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1      The old churches are saying, “He is not here;” and,
         “Who shall roll away the stone?”

         The stone has been rolled away by human suffer-
         ing. The first rightful desire in the hour of loss, when
5      believing we have lost sight of Truth, is to know where
         He is laid. This appeal resolves itself into these
         questions:—

         Is our consciousness in matter or in God? Have we
         any other consciousness than that of good? If we have,
10    He is saying to us to-day, “Adam, where art thou?” We
         are wrong if our consciousness is in sin, sickness, and
         death. This is the old consciousness.

         In the new religion the teaching is, “He is not here;
         Truth is not in matter; he is risen; Truth has become
15    more to us,—more true, more spiritual.”

         Can we say this to-day? Have we left the conscious-
         ness of sickness and sin for that of health and
         holiness?

         What is it that seems a stone between us and the
20    resurrection morning?

         It is the belief of mind in matter. We can only come
         into the spiritual resurrection by quitting the old con-
         sciousness of Soul in sense.

         These flowers are floral apostles. God does all this
25    through His followers; and He made every flower in
         Mind before it sprang from the earth: yet we look into
         matter and the earth to give us these smiles of God!

         We must lay aside material consciousness, and then
         we can perceive Truth, and say with Mary, “Rabboni!”
30    —Master!

         In 1866, when God revealed to me this risen Christ,
         this Life that knows no death, that saith, “Because he

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1      lives, I live,” I awoke from the dream of Spirit in the
         flesh so far as to take the side of Spirit, and strive to cease
         my warfare.

         When, through this consciousness, I was delivered from
5      the dark shadow and portal of death, my friends were
         frightened at beholding me restored to health.

         A dear old lady asked me, “How is it that you are
         restored to us? Has Christ come again on earth?”

         “Christ never left,” I replied; “Christ is Truth, and
10    Truth is always here,—the impersonal Saviour.”

         Then another person, more material, met me, and I
         said, in the words of my Master, “Touch me not.” I
         shuddered at her material approach; then my heart went
         out to God, and I found the open door from this sepulchre
15    of matter.

         I love the Easter service: it speaks to me of Life, and
         not of death.

         Let us do our work; then we shall have part in his
         resurrection.