Blessed are they who see, and yet believe not!
Yea, blest are they who look on graves, and still
Believe none dead; who see proud tyrants ruling.
And yet believe not in the strength of Evil;
Blessed are they who see the wandering poor,
And yet believe not that their God forsakes them;
Who see the blind worm creeping, and yet believe not
That even that is left without a path.
The whole structure of Christian Science rests on a foundation whose basis is that God is All. All the rest of the subject-matter in the Christian Science text-book is but for the purpose of educating the reader up to a state of consciousness wherein he perceives the light of this eternal fact, that God and His manifestation include all being, reality. Science and Health brings a scientific system of logic, preparing the individual thought for the perception of this great truth about God; namely, that He is all—Omnipotence, Omniscience, Omnipresence. All study of detail but leads up to this one fact of being. Through the education of the spiritual sense we grow to perceive this fact more and more clearly, and to perceive also with more clearness the wisest way of attaining this unfolding of perception.
The method of procedure is plainly stated in "Miscellaneous Writings," p. 289: "From a human standpoint of good, mortals must first choose between evils, and of two evils choose the less; and at present the application of scientific rules to human life seems to rest on this basis." Again, we read on page 288, "Wisdom in human action begins with what is nearest right under the circumstances, and thence achieves the absolute." Thus it will be seen that Christian Science demands no sacrifice of common sense, and did Christian Scientists advocate what they are often supposed to, they would readily admit themselves to be as devoid of common sense as their critics are deficient in correct information concerning them. Not that one wishes to imply that a closer approach to personalities must always make them appear admirable, but that a nearer view of the Principle of all perfect being must reveal some glimpse of the beauty of that perfection. Christian Science must stand on impersonal merit rather than on a personal basis. Even the character and example of Jesus could hardly be said to have made him popular with the worldly. It is not wholly necessary, then, that a prophet should be admired by the worldly, that God's word may spread. They said of even Jesus, "He hath a devil," and "casteth out devils through Beelzebub," or, to use our modern term, they said he healed by hypnotism. And so in our day also the idea has somehow become the vogue that Christian Science considers disease to be purely an imaginary condition, and that the healing is effected by a sort of hypnotism, or power of one mind over another.
