The following letter was received by me a few weeks ago from one who, without other help, such as class teaching or church or personal contact with Scientists, and having to overcome, withal, the difficulties of a foreign language, is faithfully trying to make Christian Science his own, and to learn to live it and demonstrate it purely from our text-book, Science and Health, and the other writings of our Leader, in connection with the Bible Lessons, the Journal, and the Weekly. He has never been in any English-speaking country, and even a year ago had the greatest difficulty in reading English with frequent helps of the dictionary, which makes study very tedious and severely tested his earnestness. In fact, he began again to take English lessons simply to enable him to understand Science and Health. This letter came to me without my seeking; I submit it in the light of a waymark of the progress of Christian Science in foreign countries. At the same time, I would mention that last spring "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," was placed in three of the principal public libraries of Zurich, which, as the seat of the University of Switzerland and as the historic field of labor of one of the chief reformers of Europe, Ulrich Zwingli,. and the birthplace of the great educator and friend of the people, Heinrich Pestalozzi, seems particularly fitted to become the cradle in Switzerland of this highest of all Gospels of Truth, the glorious message of God-given freedom as revealed to all mankind through the Discoverer of Christian Science. The three libraries in question are, the Stadtbibliothek Zurich (founded in 1629), which serves particularly as a place of reading for professors and students of the University and for the educated classes, both foreigners and natives; the Pestalozzi-Gesellschaft, which library reaches more particularly the people and the younger element of the population, and the Museumsgesellschaft, whose reading rooms are frequented largely by tourists and foreigners of all nationalities sojourning in Zurich. In one of these places there is also the Journal, and in another the Christian Science Weekly, since its first appearance. The letter in free translation reads as follows:—
Zurich, October 11, 1898, it is now a year since I became interested through you in Christian Science, and a year also that I have read every day in Science and Health, or occupied myself with its teachings in some way. This allows me to express myself on the subject of this wonderful book, whose deep contents embrace every problem of existence and are at the same time sustained by so much love. I have read it through carefully many times, and have studied it, honestly trying to penetrate into it as, far as I was able to, and I have not found a single statement which is in any way contradictory to what has been said before or after, but all that is written there is born of the same lofty principle of an exalted and sublime conception of God and of the relation of man to the same, a revelation which in its immensity is overpowering, and silences all human reason.
It is true that Christian Science differs widely from, and is in a sense incompatible with, the religion and religious practices of the churches of our country, but it is certainly in accord with that religion which Jesus taught, and it makes upon us the same great demands as did the latter. And the conception of God in Christian Science is so much higher and purer than that of any of the accepted confessions of faith, that it should not prove too difficult to the Christian churches to make it their own, as surely they are all seeking for that which is best for man. Naturally Christian Science has to battle against a great many prejudices and against ideas which have grown up with us since childhood, and it is the latter which most stubbornly obstruct its spreading in conservative Europe.
