Christian Science is spiritual, because it is the Science of Spirit, and the modes or operations thereof; and it views all things as spiritual. It claims that all ends ought to be spiritual, and the same of all the means employed for their attainment. Nor are we to be content with the letter of the Science, but should be "in the Spirit." We are poor, indeed, if mortal advantages are all the good we desire or seek from Christian Science. To all such it is not Christian, because it is not Christly. We fear there are very many who are living on this low plane of Christian Science. They have little or no spiritual light, or faculty divine, in clear action and vision, by which they, can directly discern the glorious Truth of the Gospel as scientifically conceived.
All these are practically dead to religious good, being void of spiritual enthusiasm, earnestness, and joy. They want a power which the letter of science or philosophy cannot give. They need to be impregnated with the moral and spiritual energy of the Infinite, and so be born again. The Spirit of God must awaken them to the consciousness of being children of God, when they will be children of the Light and children of the Day; not as now, children of Night and of Darkness.
It is a larger measure of this living spiritual insight which the Church needs, above all things. Very valuable are all the advantages and evidences derived from bodily healing; but these do not necessarily bring the spiritually dead to life, nor give spiritual vision to the blind. They do not necessarily bring the heart into affiliation with God, nor disclose the moral splendors of the upperworld,—the spiritual realm, where the advanced spiritual nature lives and moves and has its being. For this we want to be imbued with power from on high,—that is, from God. A vast number of adherents, without this light and power, would only be a cloud-wrapper round the more spiritual, and hide from those beyond the better and holier light of the true Church. The glory of the Lord needs to light upon us all, and burn into us, that we may all arise and shine.
