The present age is generally recognized as pre-eminently progressive in all that relates to man's material welfare. New ideas are eagerly sought and tested, and vigorously exploited without regard to the methods of our fathers, or the upsetting of ancient practices. Society is not disturbed by those changes, for where a new idea is welcomed, conditions adjust themselves naturally to it. The sturdy common sense of men preserves them, in these matters from the stagnation of prejudice and superstition. The practicability and advantage of invention or discovery ensure them acceptance, though they may involve the abandonment of conditions held in honor for centuries. Turning, however, to man's religious beliefs, we enter the atmosphere of superstitious veneration for ancestral opinions, of unreasoning prejudice and opposition to progress. Dogmas that were evolved from a dark and forbidding concept of God are adhered to with strange pertinacity by those who in other things are open-minded and progressive. The Christianity engendered amid such conditions is often little more than doctrine worship instead of a knowledge of the Christ-love which is to redeem the world.
Because of these things it is not surprising that business men and others do not as a rule consider religion in any way as a guide to success, or a source of daily interest and profit. The sublime teachings of Jesus are not commonly accepted as practicable in the stress and struggle of human life, and so Christianity is not sought or relied upon in solving its problems. Men do not intentionally neglect God. They desire to think right about Him for they instinctively believe in a Supreme Being; and they hope when their earthly course is run to come out at the right place, but in the present the things of material sense are paramount. In their thought of God He has not appealed to them as a factor in their daily affairs any more than as a healer of their pains; and so men have continued to stand in the places of their fathers, thinking that religion had reached the limit of its usefulness and that God had no further revelation of Himself for man. From this outlook they have viewed with disbelief, if not with opposition, the presentment by Mrs. Eddy of her discovery of the scientific nature of Christianity which she has designated for this and future ages as Christian Science,—the loving, compassionate, and healing Christ-knowledge made practical to men.
The discovery and founding of Christian Science by Mrs. Eddy has marked the world's greatest progress in religious thought and practice. The unfurling folds of its banner of religious liberty startled from their dark hiding-places the croaking enemies of reform who would hold humanity forever in ignorance of man's spiritual freedom. In achieving its phenomenal growth as a religious denomination, Christian Science has had to face not only sectarian prejudice and the opposition of scholastic training, but the inherent enmity of mortals to spirituality. It has overcome these conditions for those who are now its adherents, through satisfying proofs of its practical worth and utility. It has given them visible demonstrations of the supreme common sense of righteousness and purity triumphant over sin, and of spiritual power over mortals' law of disease and suffering. They have thus seen the possibility and the wisdom of reaching a higher knowledge of God than was afforded them in their former beliefs. If it is sensible in men to have a religion it should be the most sensible thing of their life; it should be a logical and practical understanding of God and spiritual things which is capable of entering into every detail of existence, and which makes possible to men on earth a life of righteousness and peace.
