That Christian Scientists attach to certain words a somewhat different meaning from that generally accepted, is a fact frequently referred to by critics of this movement.
Our use of the words Mind, Science, reality, and demonstration, seems to be particularly disagreeable to the ordinary critic, although even a cursory study of these words in any of the standard dictionaries would show the perfect propriety of their use as found in all Christian Science works. The thought that Christian Science needs a "new tongue" wherewith to voice its God-given message to man is met with scorn, and is ridiculed most thoughtlessly, for no one who has watched the growth and unfolding of a human being from infancy to manhood can have failed to note the changes of language his growth has necessitated.
The infant's language of appeal is soon changed to that of affirmation; if we compare the language of a child of five years with that he used at three we shall find he has developed a new tongue indeed, and at ten or twelve years of age he will need an entirely new vocabulary with which to express his schoolboy needs and pleasures. Every change in his life, from home to school, from school to college, mill, shop, or office; every new phase of mental or manual development; every field of activity he may enter, demands its own mode of expression; and a study of the tongues used by the scholar, the statesman, the financier, the manufacturer, the merchant, the railroad man, and the seaman shows that the needs of every profession have created a special tongue for their uses.
