"Now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation." Early in the Christian era Paul uttered these words, and his demonstration of the divine power to save from disease as well as sin, proved how true they were, but human theories relating to salvation have gradually darkened the apprehension of their real import, and postponed the realization of their fulfilment. These false theories admit that the way of salvation is to be found in God, but they make its realization conditional upon a transition called death. Thus Paul's statement is brought into collision with the commonly accepted theory as to when the desired salvation may be experienced.
Christian Science comes reiterating Paul's words, and nothing in its teaching seems more surprising to the general religious thought than its declaration of the possibility of a present release from evil, physical as well as mental, through the power of Spirit.
The theories relative to the conditions or requirements necessary to the accomplishment of a given result are sometimes the greatest hindrances to the discovery and application of the best way of achieving that result. Wireless telegraphy was just as much a physical possibility a century ago as it is to-day but it was not then a mental possibility. No law of mechanics, of mathematics, or of electrical science has changed in the slightest. The human apprehension of these has, however, changed very greatly; hence the different results. In the earlier history of telegraphy it was a common supposition that the electrical energy developed at one station, by whatever means, must be transmitted to the instrument of the other, or receiving station that a conductor was an indispensable necessity for the transmission of this energy was the accepted theory, and time, thought, effort, and tens of thousands of dollars were expended in the endeavor to discover the best possible conductor. Just so long as the theory that a conductor was indispensable held the ground, no effort was made to communicate with the distant station without it. The acceptance of this theory excluded from thought the supposition of another way, and hence it excluded any effort to accomplish the desired result by other means. At last, however, there came one who divined that this theory of a conductor, as an indispensable factor in telegraphy, was not correct. His questionings respecting the old and cruder method opened the way to a better one, and it was found that instruments properly adjusted will detect and manifest the energy developed at a distant station, even though there be no special conductor to guide that energy to the given point, and wireless telegraphy became a possibility "now." Thus we see how accepted theories concerning a desired end may retard the adoption of more perfect means for the accomplishment of the required end or even the effort to find them.
