When Peter was on trial for preaching and practising Christianity, he said to the Court (Acts iv. 10): "Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole." All the divines and commentators, who have undertaken to explain the Holy Writings and the Master's commands, seem to have an idea like this, that those mighty works and miracles of the apostles were transitory characteristics of their time alone. The majority profess to believe that these demonstrations of supernatural power will be revived again, and they say they consider that the greater works still belong to the onward march of the triumphant, glorious Church. They stoutly maintain that once miracles (signs, in the Greek) were required for proof and confirmation of the Gospel, and they hope that in the blessed age, which will come after this one of ours, we shall recover the same as gifts from God, to a people ready and worthy to receive such divine blessings; but now, they say, it ought not to be demanded that the Gospel be preached with miracles of healing (Greek: by miracles and healings), seeing that the former age has passed away, and men always have Moses and the Prophets, and all the words of the New Testament.
Of course we, as professors of Christian Science, disagree with this teaching, believing that our demonstrations are not made except by the power of the Holy Ghost, and persuaded that God gives us no good thing which we can lose by His will. Indeed, their speech is unreasonable and inconsistent. They advance no sufficiently reliable explanation. We are not persuaded. Let us grant them that salvation can come without bodily health. I know that many have served with the mind the law of God, and with the flesh the law of sin and death. Neither have I ever considered that the sick died without hope. I admit, too, that the Christian Church needs neither recommendation nor apology, whether she builds hospitals, or empties what she has built. Whether she introduces, among the heathen, theology or therapeutics, she stands justified. Let no man reproach her. She has given us not an explanation, but the facts of Jesus' life. With unswerving fidelity she has preserved the Bible and preached the divinity of our Master. No sect or people can arise which shall disown her sons; for they were sons of God, even if they did not know the fulness of His grace.
Why the present chasm? If we do not belong to the world, if Jesus came to deliver us from this present evil age, why do we share with unbelieving and ungodly men their weight of sicknesses and sorrows? How does Christ save us from the power of Satan, if this life of ours must needs be prolonged by those material laws and actions which we know Jesus was manifested to take away?
