"'Oh, we won't argue about what made her better, whether medicine or something else; all we want now is to have the child cured,' said the doctor, very kind-like, and I really thought a great deal better of him than I had before, for most M. D.'s think they know everything,' she said.
"I was so glad to find she acknowledged even this much, so I talked a little longer, and explained the necessity of perfect trust in God, and the consequences of distrust in Him. She seemed very responsive and ready to believe, but then, who would not believe after such a demonstration? I have felt awed and hushed all the morning, remembering the mighty something surging through me. It seems hard to believe that at last my desire to have some grand sign shown me is already fulfilled.
"Mrs. Pearl talked beautifully this afternoon on understanding. I wish you could hear the lectures as she gives them, with all her grace and beauty and impressiveness. Here is the essence of the lesson:
"As we evolve from material to spiritual understanding, we put ourselves more and more into the divine current of Life, Health, Goodness, which is God. The higher our ideal, the higher our attainment. Believing in God as supreme Love, we find it impossible to conceive of wrath, jealousy, revenge, as emanating from or existing in Him, Her or It. As we are filled with love, it becomes universal. Everybody is judged by its tender charity, everything is tinged with its warm radiance.
"As Paul so beautifully wrote: 'Love suffereth long and is kind, love envieth not, vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil, rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth in the truth.... Love never faileth.' If this be a standard by which to judge the love of men, how much more appropriately might it judge God, who is love itself.
"In proportion as we are freed from the ignorance and narrowness of primitive, ancient opinions concerning God, we shall rise to broader and tenderer and truer conceptions of Him. To the warm, sympathetic heart, that knows the deepest needs of humanity, the 'mercy that endureth forever' is an established fact of the universal Love. To understand this Love is to be at one with it, to do the works and think the thoughts of Love. It is essential, then, first to understand the law of effort, then faith, then love, then spiritual understanding, which is the goal toward which we all hasten—understanding of all spiritual things, understanding of God, who is all spirit. As we make the effort we receive faith, as we use faith we grow in the power and capacity of love, and love brings us the fullness of all things, even understanding of infinite wisdom. Every glimpse of truth we have ever had, every glorious breath of freedom, is but a hint of what will be when we have 'awakened to righteousness.'
"We gain our knowledge by and through the law of right speaking and consequently right acting. In the Bible, the New Testament especially, great stress is laid upon the power of words. Solomon wrote, 'How forcible are right words.' 'Life and death are in the power of the tongue,' and from St. Paul we hear, 'Hold fast the form of sound words;' and James' admonition, 'Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only,' show that both considered it necessary to speak the word if they would manifest its power.
"But there is another and a holier office given to the word and that is the office of atonement. The original meaning of atone was to 'make at-one, to agree, to be in accordance, to accord.' To be at-one with a person is to be in such perfect sympathy that the thoughts of both are the thoughts and feelings of one.
"Another illustration would be to say of a chip thrown into the river, it is at-one with the current. In this sense we should aim to be so at-one with the divine Principle that we may say with Jesus, 'I am one with the Father,' for did he not say: 'They are not of this world even as I am not of this world,' and 'That they may be one even we are one.'
"To speak absolute Truth is to come into the true at-one-ment, to be at one with the divine Mind, to realize that Christ the Truth is the atoning power. The Christ is the impersonal Word of Truth which we are to speak, for 'unto us hath been committed the word of reconciliation' or atonement.