Angels along the way

Just think.  All who have ever come to Christian Science, have received “the little book” of Revelation, chapter 10, which is Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (S&H), by way of an angel.  This has been going on since 1875.  A lot of angels! 

Angels take various forms.  I would claim that Lyman Powell’s biography of Mary Baker Eddy – Mary Baker Eddy: A Life-Sized Portrait – was my angel.  It was a thought direct from God (therefore, an angel in line with the definition in S&H: Angels. God’s thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect; the inspiration of goodness, purity, and immortality, counteracting all evil, sensuality, and mortality) that sent me searching for more understanding of the God that had come to me, comforting me with the thought that God is real and a power in my life.  I believe that Powell’s book, and Science and Health, were right next to each other on the public library shelf.

But, as I see it, there were various angels along the way in the years leading up to my little revelation.  For example: the girl I sat next to at High School, who gave me a book about the shining way; the secretary at the business college I attended, and who was a student of Christian Science (I only discovered this many years later when I met her at church), and who also travelled on the same tram as I did; perhaps the Sunday school teacher, who made sure we sang the old Sankey and Moody hymns which have stayed with me since early childhood; and even the young man I corresponded with for a while.  

I think the book that I remember as being about the shining way, quoted from Proverbs 4:18:  “But the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”). 

The young man mentioned was a good man, and he quoted from the Bible with a thought that I was a good person.  My reaction at the time was that I was not as good as he claimed.

All of these, I have come to believe, were angels on my path to Christian Science.  All, I am sure, had a more Christly view of me than I had of myself.  In fact, as I keep thinking about my teenage and young woman years, I would say that every practising Christian I was friendly with then was at least a little angel prompting me on my way.  Mostly, they were of the Baptist persuasion, as I remember.

What a debt I owe to all of them.  I have the opportunity “to pass it on” to everyone I meet.  I like Mrs. Eddy’s, “No reproof is so potent as the silent lesson of a good example” (Mis. 126:20-21).
Joyce Voysey