In Isaiah 19:13, we read: "In that day shall five cities speak the language of Canaan, and swear to the Lord of hosts." As Christian Scientists we waste a good deal of time, to mortal sense, in quibbling about words. The true phraseology of Christian Science is given us in Science and Health, and is amply sufficient to express the understanding of Spirit as revealed in present consciousness;—but this becomes ours, only through demonstration. I have, so far, realized no impoverishment in the outward symbol of speech, no inadequacy on its part to convey the understanding to which I have attained.
The significance of words is revealed in the thought underlying, so that it is not necessary, in our intercourse one with another, that our words become stereotyped; nor is that understanding to be condemned, whose expressed thought finds itself clothed in a different English garb from the one our own is accustomed to wear. We have found that the same word may mean the same thing or a different thing, according to our conception of what we state, or the conception of what is stated by another concerning a subject; while it is equally true that different words may hold the same relation to and have the same bearing upon a subject in question.
My experience has proven that we frequently hide our ignorance of spiritual things under cover of the insufficiency of language to express them, when, because of not having done our work, we have nothing to express. We are not warranted by words given in Science and Health on pages 445, 295, 9, 11, to thus interpret their meaning. Science and Health is explicit in this matter, and teaches its students that the Senses of Spirit abide in understanding.
