To-night she laid down her
shield, and I saw the beating of a very pure and loving heart. The
text of her talk was that we should never allow ourselves to
believe in our limitations, because they did not really exist. I
found her, to my surprise, intensely emotional, with a passionate
disbelief in and yet pity for all sorrow and suffering. She
appealed to me to take up Christian Science--"not to read or talk
about it," she said; "that is no use: it is a life, not a theory;
just accept it, and live by it, and you will find it true."
But there is one part of me that rebels against the whole idea of
Christian Science--my reason. I found, or thought I found, this
woman to be wise both in head and heart, but not wise in mind. it
seems to me that pain and sorrow and suffering are phenomena, just
as real as other phenomena; and that one does no good by denying
them, but only by accepting them, and living in them and through
them. One might as truly, it seems, take upon oneself to deny that
there was any such colour as red in the world, and tell people that
whenever they saw or discerned any tinge of red, it was a delusion;
one can only use one's faculty of perception; and if sorrow and
suffering are a delusion, how do I know that love and joy are not
delusions too? They must stand and fall together.
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