IT is admitted by all who study the text-book of Christian Science, or who are healed by its ministry, that a great spiritual awakening is felt, and that it is manifested in a new interest in the Bible and in religion generally. Texts which had formerly no special significance are illuminated, and often the question is asked, Why did I not see all this before? The statement that Christian Science is a rediscovery of the divine Principle underlying the teaching and practice of Christ Jesus, brings joy to many a heavy heart, especially when this declaration is supported by their healing. In many of these cases, however, the one who has accepted Christian Science is asked by friends who do not understand its teaching, if the same spiritual uplifting could not have been found in the church which he had left. The outsider does not, and perhaps cannot, appreciate the tremendous significance of the Christ-healing,—the actual demonstration of Immanuel, God with us, and it sometimes happens that the beginner in Christian Science attempts to explain past experiences in their relation to the newly-gained understanding of Truth, and confusion is sure to result if he is led to believe that the old sense and the new are in any wise identical.
This may be illustrated by the case of a good woman who had been deeply religious before coming into Christian Science. On one occasion, soon after her healing, she said, "Why, I always believed that God is all." She was then asked if she had not believed in the reality of sin, disease, and death, prior to her study of Christian Science. She admitted that she had, and that she had also believed in the reality of matter. In answer to the question, whether she now considered such belief consistent with the Scriptural teaching that God, Spirit, is all, and that "there is none beside Him," she admitted very readily that she had been mistaken in so thinking, and that she was glad to be corrected.
Now, Christian Science stands by the declaration that God is all,—that He is unchanging good, and never less than perfect. It shows, however, that the human concept of God and man is very erroneous, and that mortals suffer terribly from their false sense until error is given up for Truth. As we study the Bible in the light of Christian Science we see that those of the olden time understood Truth with varying degrees of clearness; and that a clear glimpse of spiritual reality always resulted in a demonstration which proved a power above and beyond materiality, and the fact that such demonstrations were not more generally made, is evidence that their divine Principle was not understood to the exclusion of all belief in the reality of matter or its supposed laws.
