"The people of Boston," observes our slurring contemporary, the Journal, "are bound to maintain their reputation as cultivators of fads. That is why the Christian Science 'Church' in that city now has ten thousand members, two thousand four hundred having been added on Sunday at one fell swoop A long while ago Anne Hutchinson found Boston a fertile field for the spread of her doctrine of the 'inward light,' so that the orthodox had to banish her in self-defence; much later came transcendentalism; later still came the cult of Mozoomdar and Buddhism. But Christian Science really seems to be going ahead of them all."
The people of Boston, it may be said, are commonly rated as a pretty intelligent and progressive kind of American people, and it they have gone into the new religion of Christian Science so numerously, that of itself is a pretty good card for Christian Science. As a matter of fact, while Boston is the birthplace, and so, naturally, has a lead in the development of the Science Church, it is significant that the spread of the Science has been no less remarkable in other communities not ordinarily rated as so "advanced," or receptive to new ideas, as Boston—in New York, in Chicago, in Providence, for instance.
The growth of the Science Church, perhaps unparalleled in the history of religious movements since the world began, is one of the marvels of our time. It commands, and has commanded, the attention and unprejudiced study of scholars, theologians, and sociologists, the acceptance of the highly intelligent, and the devotion of those of humbler mental equipment, who ask nothing but the inspiration of faith for spiritual guidance. Such a movement is not to be cavalierly dismissed as a fad or treated with a slur, any more than would a similarly conspicuous movement developed in the name of Methodism, Unitarianism, Adventism, or other title that represents the workings of sincere human thought, reaching after spirituality, seeking the solution of the great problem of creation and life, the most impressive and the most interesting task to which the mind of man can devote itself. We are not called upon to accept any such human manifestation unless it appeals to us individually. But we are bound to regard it with respect, to follow it with interest, to rejoice at whatever measure of good it may accomplish— that is, we are, if our human instincts have not been so warped and twisted that we are become tolerant of nothing, and not even content with ourselves.
