n the church to which they belonged, but they did
not see the light clearly. They were seekers after the truth.
On one day of the next week after the conversation in his home with
the Davis', Jake and Kate went to the railway station in Bethany to
see their Aunt Mellisa off. She had been visiting with her brother,
Peter Newby, for a few days and was on her way home to Boston.
While sitting in the station chatting and waiting for the train to
come, Kate Newby saw a wall-pocket in the waiting-room on which was a
neat sign, "Take One," filled with printed literature. She stepped to
the receptacle and took out two or three pieces of literature which
she placed in her handbag, and she thought no more about it till she
got home and opened her bag to get her handkerchief.
Something about the leaflet attracted her attention, and she sat down
and read it. The pamphlet proclaimed the virtues of Christian Science
to heal all kinds of mental and physical sicknesses and troubles.
There is no sickness, sin or death, said the treatise. All of these
things are errors of mortal mind. We are, it continued, to ignore and
repudiate these errors, for God is good and everything is good; God is
eternal Mind, all-embracing, and there can be no death, and sin, and
sickness in God. Material things, it said, are not important, the
spiritual is the important. The basis of all things is the spiritual,
hence we can count material things as immaterial and be all engrossed
in God. The false notion that there is sickness, it said, has led many
to the grave, the false notion that there is a devil has led to the
idea of sin. But sin and sickness are errors of the mortal mind, and
when we get swallowed up in the one great mind (God), there will be no
more sickness, pain, sin, or death. Much more it said which space will
not permit us to narrate here.
Kate Newby read on and on. She was longing for something better than
she had. The arguments of the pamphlet seemed plausible to her, and
she embraced them. Seeing that the Christian Science text-book was
advised, she ordered a copy of Mrs. Eddy's Science and Health. When
it arrived she read it assiduously. She was getting very deep into the
meshes of it. Her theology was undergoing a radical change. God,
to her, was no longer personal, but the great Mind which is
all-comprehensive. She tried to believe herself well, free, and happy,
and she began to enjoy a measure of relief. But, at the same time,
Ka
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