The combined efforts at this hour of the materialistic portion of the pulpit and press, to retard by misrepresentation the stately goings of Christian Science, are giving it new impetus and energy, awakening the vox populi—directing more critical observation of its uplifting influence upon the health, morals and spirituality of man.
Their movements indicate fear and weakness, a physical and spiritual need that Christian Science should remove and the results become glorious. The conclusion cannot be pushed that woman has no rights that man is bound to respect. This is woman's hour in all the sweet amenities, charities, and reforms of to-day. With my scores of letters daily filled with unmeasured thanks and praise, it is difficult to say which may be most mischievous to the human heart, the praise or the dispraise of mankind.
I have loved the Church and followed it, thinking it was following Christ; but if the pulpit will allow the people to go no further in this direction and reject Apostolic Christianity, seeking to stereotype infinite Truth, it is a thing to be thankful for that we can walk alone the straight and narrow way, in the words of Douglas, "God and one are a majority.
It was the pulpit and press, clerical robes and prohibiting free speech, that cradled and covered the sin of the South, that most unmitigated system of crimes, American slavery; and it required the enlightenment of these through civil and religious reform to blot out that inhuman code. It was the Southern pulpit and press that influenced the people to wrench from man both human and divine rights to subserve the interests of wealth, religious caste, civil and political power. And the pulpit had to be purged of that sin by human gore, when the blood of Christ would have washed it away in Christian Science.
The cry of the colored slave had scarcely been heard and hushed when another sharp sound of oppression comes because of those who hold the children of Israel in bondage. Another form of inhumanity lifts its hydra head to forge anew the old fetters, to shackle conscience, stop free speech, slander, vilify, and invite its prey, then turn and refuse the victim a single vindication through the journals employed in this most unprecedented conspiracy.
A conflict more terrible than the battle of Gettysburg awaits the crouching wrong that refuses to yield its prey to the peace of the desert, when a voice is heard crying in the wilderness, the spiritual famine of this period, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight."
Must history repeat itself, and religious intolerance, arrayed against the rights of man, again deluge the earth in blood? The question at issue with mankind is, Shall we have a spiritual christianity and a spiritual healing, or a materialistic religion and healing? The advancing faith and hope of christianity, the earnest seeking after practical truth that shall cast out error and heal the sick, refuse to be ordered to the rear or laid upon the rack; they wisely demand for man his God-given heritage, human and divine rights, that his honest convictions and proofs of advancing truth be allowed due consideration, and treated not as pearls trampled upon.
My ancestors came to America to worship God according to the dictates of conscience. The first settlers of the State, they planted the standard of pure and undefiled religion before God and man. So shall the children of Puritans speak at this day in the words of St. Paul, "I was free born," and seek a higher inheritance, even the liberty of the sons of God.
The charges against my views are false but natural, since those bringing them do not understand my statement of the science I introduce, and are unwilling to be taught it, even gratuitously; if they did understand it, they could demonstrate this science,—healing the sick—hence the injustice of their interpretations.
It is the "new tongue," the language of them "that lay hands on the sick and they recover," which they refuse to hear the spiritual interpretation of. For instance, the literal meaning of "lay hands on the sick" would be manipulation; its moral meaning, found in the "new tongue," is spiritual power, as in another Scripture— "His hand is not shortened that it cannot save."
Those familiar with my history are more tolerant; they have known me all my life an invalid until I found health in just what I teach. I have professed Christianity a half century, and now calmly challenge the world, upon fair investigation, to furnish a single instance of departure in one of my works from the highest possible ethics, and Christian Science. Man has a nobler destiny on earth than has dawned in its full-orbed significance upon her children—the sick-bound and sin-enslaved. To unfold this upward tendency to health, greatness and goodness, I shall continue to labor and wait.
