SAID the wise man of old, "Where there is no vision, the people perish:" and in later days a great philosopher, speaking to the youth of Athens, who if no longer under the thrall of paganism had not yet awakened to that largest service to mankind which Christianity was to reveal, said, "The gods are on high Olympus, but the Greeks are at your door." In Palestine, still later, a greater teacher than Socrates, urging his followers to consecrate themselves to the service of humanity, exclaimed, "Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest." The sick and suffering were at their door.
The faint dawn foreseen by Socrates, of a religion made for men, breaking through the gloom of the pagan belief of man made to be the tool' and puppet of an Olympian myth, deepened into radiant surety under the inspired teaching of the great Galilean. The Christianity which he revealed to his wondering companions did not dwell apart from the dust and travail of human endeavor on some high Olympus of iron dogma and cruelty, of greed and superstition, but took up its abode among the humble, the pure in heart, the suffering, the lonely. Here at last w as a faith which did admit of demonstration: a religion that was not an incident in human life, but its very essence, its summit, its crowning glory, toward which humanity, often through agony and pitiless persecution, should move and in which it should find the hunger of its heart satisfied.
Less than fifty years ago a religious movement founded upon the teaching of the Nazarene fearlessly declared his pure idealism to be the supreme force in human life which could inspire and direct all true human activities along spiritual lines. "The ideals of primitive Christianity," Mrs. Eddy writes, "are nigh, even at our door" (The People's Idea of God, p. 27). This new-old religion, with its ringing note of splendid optimism, stirred the stagnant waters of material thought first to skeptical derision, later to wonder, antagonism, and grudging acknowledgment. Many "who came to scoff, remained to pray." Rudely jostled by orthodoxy, glowered upon by Mr. Worldly Wiseman and the chronic pessimist, who if given the choice of two evils would take them both, Christian Science continued intrepidly upon its way in the face of misrepresentation and slander, the radius of its healing power encroaching more and more upon the dark domain of sickness and sin."
