Willingness ... to leave the old for the new, renders thought receptive of the advanced idea. — Science and Health, p. 324.
The truth is intolerant of every law save that of its own nature. It is no less free than self-contained, and cannot accommodate itself to the demands of erroneous sense in any degree. The endeavor to garner it into creedal formulas has never succeeded, and for the reason that it is to be measured to human thought, not so much in terms of speech as in the largeness and splendor of spiritual living. In human history truth has sometimes seemed to be tethered "by the authority of men," but it has always, and speedily, burst presuming fetters and reasserted its native and eternal freedom.
The great non-conformists have all contributed to the emancipation of Christian truth from the would-be bonds of tradition and ecclesiastical dictum, but while they have been heroically loyal to their convictions, they have not always rightly apprehended that liberty is truth's essential state; that its authority and rule are to be established by demonstration, and by that alone. True Protestants have always stood for a more spiritual interpretation of the Scriptures, but their faith has fallen far short of that of the apostolic Church; they have had no thought of proving their theses as did the Master and his disciples, and their efforts to conserve a higher religious sense by imbedding it in a matrix of human statement, has always been attended by disadvantage to their cause, though it may have seemed to bring temporary gain. In our day the greatness of this mistake is made apparent through the healing works of Christian Science. These present a true basis for estimating what the Reformation would have accomplished for the race if at that time the Principle and rule of scientific demonstration had been apprehended and brought into practical touch with religious problems.
