“They do well who simply do their duty where duty finds them”

Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy.

Dear Leader: — Permit me to thank you for your inspired article, “Personal Contagion,” in a recent number of the Sentinel. It is a tremendous help in solving the question, “What shall I do?” when appeals to personal sense invade the thought and interfere with the proper spiritual solution of the problems confronting the student of Christian Science. If God is indeed everywhere, then one does not need to seek Him as a distant friend would be sought, using railroad trains or steamship lines to visit, uninvited, distant places. I have regretted that in my seven years in the study of Christian Science I have seen neither Boston nor Concord; neither Pleasant View nor Mrs. Eddy; but, as you are reported to have once said to your students in a class, “Duty never points in two directions,” and it has always pointed to my home environment, and never Eastward (in the flesh). I thank you for your letter, because it helps me to feel that I have not been remiss in any loving tribute toward our Leader or the Cause she loves.

I was glad I had listened to the inner voice and almost reluctantly remained at home from the dedication in June, when on that historic morning I stood on the platform in answer to a sudden call to take the First Reader’s place in the service, and felt, as the service progressed, that wonderful sense of harmony which spread over the country from the dedicatory services and blessed the entire Field. Nothing in my previous experience as First Reader so impressed me as did that service in Columbus, on the morning of the dedication of the Extension to The Mother Church, and to my thought there came the dear uplifting, “They do well who simply do their duty where duty finds them;” and I knew that I had received a blessing which I would have missed had I smothered my real conviction of what was right to do in my case, and gone where personal sense beckoned.

As one of those who are the beneficiaries of your loving labors for mankind, it had been a happy hope that I might visit Concord this year and see you even from a distance; but when your announcement expressed the wish that faithful students would at this season fix their thoughts on God and refrain from visiting Pleasant View, I made you a visit in loving thought, and gave up the trip to Concord. I gave up the trip to Boston when the appeal was made for more money, and I knew my money was needed more at Boston than was my presence in the flesh. Now comes your loving message, which seems to me a benediction, and I deeply thank God to learn that the inner guidance was the true inspiration and that obedience thereto brings a spiritual reward in direct line with your teaching. An appeal received last Sunday for physical help, from a young woman and a stranger, was met by a perfect healing in four days of absent treatment. May I ascribe this also to the effort to be obedient to “the one divine Person,” whose you are?

Yours very appreciatively and respectfully,
E. Howard Gilkey.
Columbus, O., July 13, 1906.