"I am often asked what I think about the mental method, mind-cure, Christian Science, or whatever may be the most appropriate term; and I have been warned repeatedly against it by excellent and trusted friends. However, I cannot see in it the danger that many do. We live in a strangely materialistic age, when thought is declared to be a secretion of the brain, and revelation looked upon as nothing but a myth. Thousands of well-intentioned persons had come to the end of the rope and were beating their heads against a stone wall, finding no mode of egress into the upper air of spirituality and faith. It seems to me that just because the world had gone so far, and had so largely become a victim to the theory that only "seeing is believing," the heavenly powers brought in this great reaction which declared that the invisible is all in all; that thoughts are the real things and things are but effervescent shadows; that there is no escape from what is infinitely good and infinitely imminent in everything created; that evil is a negation and must pass away; that to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. I have never studied the question seriously, because I have not had the time; but from conversations with experts in this study, who are also among the best men and women I ever have known, I have certainly felt that it would be disloyalty to God and to humanity for me to speak against this new era. That some who have entered upon it are not genuine; that some cases of cure are not actual, must necessarily be in so great a movement. There must be a counterfeit beside the real, but I am confident that if Christians will take what is good in this new evangel, and eschew what is evil, it may become a mighty power for the triumph of him who said: "My words are spirit and they are life."
No reader of the Journal need be told who Miss Willard is, and this fact gives added weight and value to the above expression, as a sign of the times. Christian Science strikes at personality just as Jesus did, and the pulpit now, as in his time, is its strongest entrenchment. Jesus said, "Except ye turn and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven." Christian Science repeats these words. Those who know in what beliefs the modern pulpit is built up, know what mountains have to be removed before its occupants can be reached by Science.
Miss Willard's words voice the thought of a constantly increasing proportion of the membership of Christian churches, and of ministers who are spiritually minded, and whose position makes them leaders, and in a degree independent, of their organizations. Members of all Christian churches are experiencing the benefits of healing, and the leaven of Truth is working in a way that excites the alarm and bitter opposition of the great body of clergy. That portion of the membership that constitutes the spiritual vitality of the churches is already largley won over, or favorably inclined toward Christian Science; that which is conventional, to whom incidents of social consideration, tradition, prejudice, are the main thing, stands firm with the pulpit.
