“Trust in (God) at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him.” (Ps.62:8)
To “pour out your heart before God”, means to make a covenant with Him, to serve Him every day, in every way, to the best of your understanding. Recently one of our practitioners reminded me that Mr. Evans told her many years ago to make a covenant with God – and she did. This covenant, to which she has been faithful, enabled her to stand with Truth all these years, for the continuance and prosperity of this church and Mrs. Eddy’s pure Christian Science. Julia Bartlett, who was an early student of Mrs. Eddy and a faithful worker, writes in “Reminiscences of Mary Baker Eddy”:
The following are the Tenets of that time (around the fall of 1880) and the first ever in print of the Church of Christ, Scientist:
TENETS AND COVENANT
To be signed by those uniting with the Church
1st – As adherents to Truth, we take the Scriptures for our guide to Life eternal.
2nd – We rest our hope and faith on God, the only Life, Truth and Love, depending for salvation not on the person of God, but on the understanding of the Principle or Spirit that is God, and the demonstration of this Spirit or Principle according to those commands of our Master, “Go ye into all the world, preach the Gospel, heal the sick, and these signs shall follow them that believe (understand). They shall lay their hands on the sick and they shall recover.
3rd – And we solemnly covenant to faithfully obey the Ten Commandments; to walk worthy of our high calling, to deal justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God; to abhor a lie, to love truth, to do good to man, to have but one God, and to strive habitually to reach that higher understanding of Christian Science contained in the Sermon on the Mount, whereby to cast out error and heal the sick. We give no credence to Spiritualism or Mediumship, and object to mesmerism and medicine, never in any case using any ourself.