WE who have been Christian Scientists for a number of years are apt to assume that all thinking and intelligent people are more or less familiar with the teachings, methods, and works of Christian Science. Because of this, we wonder why any class of people who have the good of humanity at heart should oppose the teachings, methods, and works of our movement. We are prone to forget past history in reference to reforms and innovations, including the history of the Christian religion. We almost forget at times how the early Christians were hated, despised, and persecuted; how they were tortured, burned, and put to death, and how the greatest exponent of divine Love the world has ever known was crucified upon the cross. What was the cause of this? Largely ignorance and prejudice. The latter is always the result of the former. We do not mean ignorance of the kind implied by the ordinary use of the word, but that ignorance which comes from so ignoring facts that facts are not known.
Those who most bitterly opposed Jesus and his mission were among the recognized scholars and philosophers of his time. They represented the highest learning of their day and generation as well as the best social standing. The scribes and Pharisees of that day were the doctors of the law, the theologians, and leaders of thought. They were by no means ignorant in the usual sense, but they nevertheless wholly misapprehended the teaching and practices of Jesus and his disciples and their followers. A well-known writer says that "while the Christians were the most harmless, they were also the most hated and most slandered of living men." Not only were the Christians hated and slandered by the scribes and Pharisees, but they were despised and maligned by the pagans as well. I notice only the accusation made by the tyrant Nero against the Christians, that they had destroyed, by fire, the then Roman capital. They were the most innocent and faithful of Nero's subjects; the only subjects who offered heartfelt prayers on his behalf. It is not strange that a character like Nero should have made his best subjects the particular object of his cruelty, but it now seems surprising that the great Roman historian, Tacitus, supposedly a careful gatherer and recorder of facts, should thus have referred to the Christians of his day:—
"Nero exposed to accusation, and tortured with the most exquisite penalties, a set of men detested for their enormities, whom the common people called 'Christians.' Christus, the founder of the sect, was executed during the reign of Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilate, and the deadly superstition, suppressed for a time, began to burst out once more, not only throughout Judea, where the evil had its root, but even in the city, whither from every quarter all things horrible or shameful are drifted, and find their votaries." And why this ignorance and prejudice on the part of the great historian? A later historian tells us:—
