At a time when criticism and condemnation are rampant, it is well to remember that in so far as they are unauthorized and unjust, they are powerless to resist "the stately march of Truth;" and that antagonism to good and wholesome things is, for the most part, due to well-meaning ignorance. We may also remember that ultra-conservatism has always greeted the innovator with the old cry of Crucify him! and a different reception would reflect little credit upon the significance and value of any new thought which antagonized preconceived opinions.
Christian Science merits the good-will no less than the thoughtful consideration of all broad-minded men in view of the high spiritual ideal it presents; the unselfish and humanitarian end it seeks; the intelligence and unimpeachable character of a very large proportion of its representatives; the "good works" it has accomplished, and the splendid courage and daring it has shown in maintaining a point of view which could but array against it not only the vast mentality of conventional sin, but that of conventional piety as well. The vigor with which it has been bombarded and besieged must awaken the interest of every-unprejudiced observer, no less than the ideas for which it stands.
Religious thought has ever been strangely and perversely slow to accept the results of philosophical inquiry and scientific deduction, if in any appreciable degree they have denied the value and authority of traditional belief, and the discovery of any marked affiliation of these whilom opponents seems therefore rather surprising and prophetic. Such affiliation, however, is clearly revealed in the fact that Christian Science appeals no less strongly to the thoughtful in its metaphysics than to the suffering to its demonstrations.
