CHRISTIAN SCIENCE comprehends so much, that we cannot pretend to have learned it thoroughly, even after years of study. It is many-sided, yet withal simple. It appeals to all, yet to each differently. One will tell you he thinks it a beautiful religion, but that he pays small attention to the physical healing. Another is engrossed in getting physical healing, and is not attracted, for the time, by its religious aspects. One says that Christian Science is idealism, another finds it to be intensely practical. Both are right, and each has seen what his previous history and culture have been preparing him to see. Indeed, there is no phase of human living, however obscure it may be on the one hand, or however exalted, which is too low or too high to be searched out by the penetrating truth contained in Christian Science.
Because of the influences which introduced me to Christian Science, I may have a tendency to explore in certain directions. My neighbor, because of a very different introduction, makes his advance in another line, but we are both right, if we are at work in truth. I will find out certain things which are good for me, because my human sense stands in need of an unfoldment. My friend will make his voyage on the same limitless expanse of Mind he will stop to chart islands new for him, but always there. He and I will meet, most likely, and we will speak many other sailors on the Great Sea. What each one discovers is true and good, because God made it, and there it stands, to be discovered by all, and we may be very sure that, sooner or later, all will come upon it. I may tell my friend what I have seen, and because he has not had the same experience he may doubt the correctness of my report. But if I am right, if I have faithfully reported a true discovery, my fellow-voyagers will be sure to find it out for themselves some time, and so I wait.
To illustrate As it seems to me, we Christian Scientists are working out the problem of individuality, and whether we are doing so consciously or not, does not affect the process. In political economy we hear a good deal about socialism, communism, and other devices for regulating society. It has been said that Jesus was a socialist. It is possible to think of the great Teacher as a metaphysical socialist, but he was never a politician, and none of his words had any direct bearing upon the then existing political parties. He carefully eschewed any entanglements of that nature. Socialism, as he taught it, if it can safely be called by that much-abused name, was a religion, not a political expedient. His code was ethical, theological, and pathological, and so long as the purity and simplicity of his teachings were maintained, there was no opportunity to convert his code into an ecclesiastical dogma or make it serve as a support for predatory and selfish political enterprise.
