THE call of Christian Science is a call to deep and continuous thoughtfulness, to the fulfilment of the word of the Lord which was spoken by the prophet Isaiah, saying, "Come now. and let us reason together;" and by Ezekiel when he declared, "They shall teach my people the difference between the holy and profane, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean. And in controversy they shall stand in judgment; and they shall judge it according to my judgments: and they shall keep my laws and my statutes."
This attitude and appeal of Christian Science is immediately perceived in the fact that it demands a reconsideration of the fundamentals of faith, the deep things of Christian philosophy. The concept of being may be said to be the basic layer of right consciousness, the ground and premise of all progressive thought, and it is here that the teaching of Christian Science makes its corrective entry into the domain of erroneous and contented belief. It thus awakens both conscious and unconscious objection in mortal thought, because of the fact that it dares to question the creedal views and statements which have been revered by the noblest, most exemplary Christian people of the past. It comes to overturn the tables of the money-changers of material sense, and drive out those false interpretations which for centuries have been left undisturbed in their intrusion upon the temple of Truth, that holy structure which is sacred to Spirit, and into whose courts spiritual concepts alone have right to enter. For the physical interpretation of nature and of life Christian Science substitutes the metaphysical, the spiritual, and in so far it is revolutionary. Beginning with that sense of God and of man which Christ Jesus demonstrated to be true, it lays every stone of the structure of faith with a care that is insistently and consistently logical, and thus establishes that "building of God" whose all-inclusive borders leave no place whatever for fallacy.
The demand of Christian Science for a redetermination of human thought-values, its unhesitant questioning of traditionary and undemonstrable concepts and opinions, speak for its worth to all who remember the pitiful credulities of religious belief as a whole, and the fetters which stubborn and superstitious prejudice has ever sought to fix upon genuine spiritual aspiration. A teacher who is in any degree considerate for error thereby proves himself to be disloyal to truth and wholly unfit for his place. He must moreover, be exacting in his requirements of his pupils, he must insist that they shall become familiar with all the details of the rule and order of procedure pertaining to every problem; in a word, he must be scientific, embody and inculcate logical and discriminating thought, the habit of doing everything in unvarying conformity to the basic law involved; and in all this he fittingly illustrates the attitude and sequent authority of Christian Science with respect to mortal beliefs.
