A new philosophy invariably produces a new era in literature. In content and in form the new type of literary production is usually so radically different from the established order of things that the innovation is greeted with scathing reviews whenever it makes its appearance in the world of letters. To the student of literary history, therefore, it is not surprising that the masterpiece of Christian Science, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," together with the other published works of its revered author, should be assailed by the critics of to-day — critics who hold to a philosophy diametrically opposed to that of Christian Science.
A glance at the past reveals much. When one recalls the reception accorded the works of the romanticists in English literature, especially the deeply religious writings of Wordsworth, it is easy to see how a kind of literary blindness prevents critics from recognizing the superior merit in a writer who voices a conception of man and the universe far in advance of his times. An age that was slowly shaking itself free from the grasp of the classicists was reluctant to accept the elevated sentiments expressed in the forceful, every-day English that ramp from a pen given to such utterances as
. . . trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home.
