“Mrs. Minturn,” he gravely observed, as she paused for a moment, “when one begins to understand something of what Christian Science really is, one finds himself suddenly shorn of his former intellectual arrogance and ecclesiastical intolerance, while he stands abashed and is amazed that he had never seen these things before.”

“That is because, in our previous study of the Scriptures, we were governed by human opinions, doctrines and creeds, instead of by the spiritual law of interpretation, which always brings the proof of its supremacy.”

“But it makes one wish one hadn’t been quite so pert in flaunting one’s feathers before finer birds,” drawled Sadie, as she shot a peculiar glance at Katherine, “like a turkey we had at home once that had never seen a peacock’s plumage until after he had done a good deal of strutting around, with his own self-sufficient appendage spread out to its widest extent.  He collapsed, though, when he saw that blaze of glory.”

“Thank you, Sadie, for so pat an illustration of an exceedingly uncomfortable frame of mind,” said Prof.  Seabrook, with a merry twinkle in his fine eyes, while an appreciative laugh ran around the circle.

The girl flushed scarlet in sudden dismay.

“Prof.  Seabrook!” she faltered, “I didn’t mean—­I was only thinking of what I said to Katherine about being a Christian Scientist the day she came here.  I told her, very grandly, that I was an Episcopalian, that my grandfather was an Episcopalian clergyman, and I had my doubts about his resting easy in his grave if he knew what a rank heretic I had for a roommate.  Well, she just unfurled a white banner of Love to me, and I’ve wanted to hide my diminished head every time I’ve thought of it since.”

“All right, Sadie; there’s no offense,” returned the principal, with a smiling glance at her still flushed cheeks, “and I think there may be some others among us who have learned a salutary lesson from our modest but stanch ‘brown-eyed lassie,’ for she certainly has tried, as she told me she would on that same day, ‘to live her religion of Love.’  But,” turning again to Mrs. Minturn, “that reminds me of something else I wished to ask you.”

Reopening his book, he read aloud the sixth tenet, emphasizing the phrase “to love one another.”

“I find, in reading this book,” he resumed, “that you Scientists give a higher signification to that word ‘love’ than is implied by the ordinary interpretation.  Mere sentiment or emotion have nothing in common with your concept of its meaning?”

“Our Leader says, in her book of ‘Miscellaneous Writings,’ [Footnote:  By Mary Baker G. Eddy, page 230.] that ’no word is more misconstrued, no sentiment less understood,’” said Mrs. Minturn.  “Spiritual love is governed by its principle—­divine Love.  Emotional or sentimental love has no principle.  It is governed by mortal impulse, moods, personal attraction, and so forth.  Divine Love has but one impulse—­infinite impersonal good.  Paul’s sublime definition of charity, or the love that ‘beareth all things,’ ‘that never faileth,’ ‘that thinketh no evil,’ is the Christian Science idea of love, and as our text-book teaches, nothing short of this, lived and demonstrated in the daily life, is Christian Science love.”