There are not yet many Christian Scientists who are such because their ancestors were Scientists before them. Most of us were in time past connected with other denominations toward which we yet hold the kindliest feelings. Many of us struggled long and hard before we could see that further progress demanded the breaking of church ties, hallowed, perhaps, by years of unquestioning loyalty from ourselves and our forefathers. Like Jacob we have had to stand alone in the struggle, for it is not the part of a Christian Scientist unduly to influence any one on aught that touches his religious affiliations. These strenuous conflicts have fortified and established us and brought to light a throng of reasons for the faith that is in us; a faith that would persist in asserting itself despite our well-meant, but unavailing efforts to suppress it. All of us know what it is to be healed. We have been healed ourselves, and our friends by companies have bathed in the same healing waters. Therefore when the curative power of Christian Science is spoken of, we have before us a subject upon which we can speak with authority begotten of experience.
The multitude of ailing ones who thronged about Jesus, that master Scientist, showed the same eagerness for physical healing that we mark on all sides to-day. Bodily restoration was first in their cravings; spiritual regeneration could await a more convenient season. Then, as now, thousands cried, "Master, heal mine infirmity;" but all too rarely was heard repeated those impelling words that came straight from the heart of the publican, "God be merciful to me a sinner." Before we became conscious of the ever-presence of the Christ-truth. "who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases," we too crouched trembling before the approach of the phantasm of sickness. while reaching out with longing for whatever promised us freedom from its weakening, withering clutch. Yet even then we may have been dallying with sin, and lingering in its illusive glare until we became so fascinated and blinded that we could not see the leper's skin beneath the silken robe, or seeing no longer cared to shun it. Until our eyes were unveiled by Christian Science, disease or physical derangement to us had no affinity with sin or fear or ignorance, yet the teachings of the Great Physician plainly emphasize this relationship. Since then we have proven for ourselves that when the charm of sin, the palsy of fear, and the blindness of ignorance are destroyed by Truth, man approaches his rightful heritage of perpetual harmony. This is the every-day achievement of Christian Science.
In the domain of Christian Science activities the preventive element ranks second only to the curative. Healing the sick by the Christ method is a saintly calling; preventing the well from becoming sick is scarcely less admirable. Indeed, the two are closely reciprocal. The healing of to-day's disorder may be in effect the prevention of that which might otherwise have resulted to-morrow. Unlike materia medica, Christian Science does not recognize or admit the authority of those laws of disease which men have first devised, then tabulated, and afterwards disseminated broadcast. It will not even concede to disease an excuse for being. What physicists weigh, scrutinize, and compare, Scientists nullify, minimize, and transform. To the one, disease is an imperious, exacting tyrant to be feared and cajoled; to the other it is a misty mass of unreality that vanishes into void when touched by the sun-bright rays of Truth. The orthodox physician will employ one line of treatment to prevent a disease, and quite a different course to destroy it should it have fastened itself upon a patient. The Scientist uses but one system, that is both preventive and curative. The same sunlight that dispels the mist will prevent its gathering. The future need not be forecast so very far ahead to ascertain the time when the Scientist's work will be largely preventive; when the effect of his ministrations will be seen in the permanent salutary condition of those in whose behalf he has labored. Then there will be less and less arable soil to be found in human mentality in which disease may germinate. That the work of the Field is even now tending to this finality is shown daily in the experience of many, old and young. In illustration of what one little fellow has realized in this direction, the following incident is given.
