"The world will love its own," said Jesus. Mental science may be atheistic. Christian Science cannot. All may be in favor of mental science. All will not favor Christian Science—not yet.
Some will be prejudiced against the name and its associations. These are, to many people, suggestive of ignorance, bigotry and superstition. It will be very difficult for them at first, to think of the phrase Christian Science as anything better than a burlesque on real science; and they will naturally be tempted to conceive of its adherents as a body of conceited fanatics.
But for these very reasons we feel all the more bound to stick to our phrase. This is necessary for the vindication of our convictions, which are as clear as they are strong, that Christianity, rightly conceived and understood, is the acme of all spiritual science and philosophy; and that Christ preached and exemplified what it is our privilege "in the fulness of time," the growing ripeness of the human intellect, to philosophically expound; and to renew and carry on in limited, yet ever-growing power, its exemplification, until this world shall become "a garden of the Lord," and the golden age is come in deed and in truth. We are thus bound and destined to rescue the term "Christian" from the reproach heaped upon it, through the false and wide-spread influence of ignorance, and a designing and ambitious priest-craft. As Christ is the noblest of all known characters, so "Christian" is the noblest of all descriptive terms, and should be honored with a worthy usage, as it surely will be.
