IT is questionable whether there is anything to be gained by prolonging the discussion of Christian Science on the lines laid down by the writers of the letters which have appeared so far. These writers have not, it now appears, any direct knowledge of the book of which they have constituted themselves critics. Their fulminations are the result of what they think Mr. O— thinks Christian Scientists think. The situation involves the introduction of the topsyturvy method of Mr. G— into criticism, and the results are strictly in accordance with it. May I be permitted then to leave Mr. O— 's three champions sharing his mantle, wielding his pen, and reciting his facts, in order to discuss something more vital than the possibility of torturing mutilated sentences, torn from a context which one has not read, into any meaning that may occur to him.
Forty years ago there was one Christian Scientist in the world, to-day they are to be counted by hundreds of thousands. Forty years ago there was not a single Christian Science church, to-day Christian Science services are held in a thousand cities and towns and villages, strewn completely round the world: northward in Christiania and Stockholm, eastward on the shores of the Persian Gulf and the coasts of China, southward in the Transvaal and on the Australian continent, and westward on the Pacific slope. Forty years ago one woman had been healed by Christian Science, to-day millions of grateful people are giving God thanks for healing through it. These people have been rescued not only from the torture of pain, but from the torture of sin; not only from the misery of sickness, but from the misery of want; not only from the fear of death, but from the fear of living. They have learned what Jesus meant when he said, "If I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you." The devils of disease and sin, of fear and misery, have been cast out of them, and there has come to them instead "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding."
All this they owe to the new understanding they have obtained of the Bible, through the reading of the Christian Science text-book and commentary, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," and though they give all the glory to God, they have for their Leader, the writer of that book, Mrs. Eddy, a love and gratitude which is none the less deep and lasting in that it is not founded upon emotion. Christian Science, then, is the effort to give back to the world that supreme consciousness of God which made the first century of the Christian era the age of miracles. Now a miracle is that manifestation of the power of God which, though supremely natural to a mind conscious of His omnipresence, is mysteriously supernatural to a mind convinced of the reality of matter.
