I think few of us realize how much Christian Science has done to change our modes of thought, and topics of conversation, until we listen for a few minutes to the conversation of those about us, and find how void, how entirely empty of interest to us, most of the talk is.
We feel, even more than we see and hear, the "crying want," which is the companion of material means, and which is so fully supplied and satisfied by Christian Science, when we come to know it and live it. The conversation about us is of sin, sickness, and death as real, appalling, and unsurmountable; ours is, or should be, of the reality of health, Life, strength, beauty and goodness; and as we carry these ideas into our business, or our work of any sort, proving them to be facts, serviceable for daily use, the strong contrast between the "somethingness" of the latter, and the "nothingness" of the former is being more and more sharply defined.
I have always lived in what is so fondly called an "atmosphere of free thought and liberality," so I had none of the ritualism and straight-laced forms to discard, but my enemy was one of subtile self-righteousness, which is even more stubborn (in belief) in yielding to the pure Christ-thought. Skepticism in regard to all things spiritually discerned, and the substitution of materialistic reasoning for the same, was my "ruling passion;" and it is, naturally, on this line of thought, that the enemy's attacks are made now; but I rejoice to say that the subtile doubtings can be destroyed by the proof of the spiritual facts.
