One of the remarkable facts about Christian Science —a fact for which it is difficult to account except on the ground that this doctrine is the exposition of a great truth—is the way in which it appeals to the various phases and conditions of the human mind. To all who are striving to make life more beautiful and better worth the living, Christian Science lends a helping hand and points the way to a higher, broader, and more wholesome view of life and the destiny of man.
Whether the honest seeker after Truth be atheist or orthodox Christian, Jew, or Gentile, invalid or athlete, materialist or metaphysician, he will find somewhere in that wonderful book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker G. Eddy, something that will appeal to his peculiar condition of thought, that will answer the particular need of his particular case, and so. patiently seeking Truth, he will be led, step by step, into the glorious realization that Christian Science offers a religious thought that is satisfying—that is not only beautiful but also logical, consistent, and demonstrable, and therefore can be accepted without sacrificing intellectual integrity.
When I began the investigation of Christian Science, less than two years ago, my attitude toward the Bible was one of scepticism—even absolute infidelity in so far as a belief in the revelation of hidden spiritual truth was concerned; for there was no present evidence of this so far as I knew at that time. The theory of inspiration was apparently supported only by tradition; and I had utterly failed to grasp the idea set forth in Christian Science, that the life and works of Jesus were the demonstration of a higher spiritual law, which he revealed for the guidance of all men, and which is just as effective to-day as it was nineteen hundred years ago, so far as it is applied. In regard to the philosophy of life and the phenomena of existence my attitude was one of agnosticism, in accordance with a belief in the theory of evolution as the law of progress and the true exposition of the process of development of material phenomena and organic life up to and including man. The theory of evolution is properly only the exposition of a process, and offers no explanation of the ultimate nature of things or the First Great Cause. This realm of the unknowable is, to the materialist, a region of vague speculation and a land of superstition about which he is little troubled, although the questions involved are really those of greatest interest to mankind, involving, as they do, cause, purpose, and the destiny of man both generically and individually. The study of physical phenomena and materialistic theories affords little aid in the solution of the greatest problems of existence, and the reason for this is clearly seen when we learn in Christian Science that they are but illusions or misconceptions arising from a false sense of the eternal realities of the spiritual universe. We read in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," p. 232: "The visible universe and material man are the poor counterfeits of the invisible universe and spiritual man," and it is difficult to see how this can be logically denied by any one who believes that the individual man still exists after the change called death, and that he attains a state of perfect and eternal spiritual existence. In connection with this thought let it be clearly understood that, while Christian Scientists make a sharp distinction between the spiritual and material, the real and the unreal, or, in the words of Paul, between the temporal and the eternal, they are not blind bigots who "set a premium on ignorance" and would rejoice to see the world relapse into a state of primitive barbarism by the abandonment of scientific research. The denial that sense-perception can ever give us absolute knowledge of reality is no more than the conclusion to which most thinkers of note in nearly every school of philosophy have arrived, and Christian Scientists strongly deprecate any relaxation of energetic effort directed toward progress in all things which really tend to the happiness, comfort, convenience, and advancement of humanity, for Christian Science is a practical religion and Christian Scientists have a wholesome appreciation of conditions as they exist; but they maintain that energy and research would be more properly directed, and human progress accelerated, by the knowledge and application of the theory and practice of Christian Science.
