WE often hear it said that the most marked tendency of these times is centralization; the elimination of circuitous routes; the shortening of processes. We are said to be living very fast nowadays, and there is constant effort toward doing away with delay and useless circumlocution in all lines. That we may not be obliged to wait for the slow round of the seasons, our flowers, fruits, and vegetables are hothouse products. From the condensations of the earth, so to speak, there are being produced for us, in a few hours, many articles heretofore obtained only through the time-consuming processes of vegetable growth and mineral development, and the cultivation of much land and the labor of many men are being done away with by the swift miracles of the laboratory.
In the field of finance, fortunes are being produced at a single stroke of the geniuses of industry, through the forcing process which eliminates diversity of interest, duplication of effort, inharmonious detail, and conflicting authority, and which results in the centralization of control; in brief, by expunging all that intervenes between cause and effect. In educational lines the same idea is being worked out, and much that has been useless and trivial is being done away with, both in method and material. Intelligence and cultivation of increasingly higher grade is demanded and supplied, and the application to the mind of the student of this intensified mentality is more direct and concentrated, less scattering and general. These methods, which are today the rule in all lines of human thought and endeavor, are quite properly called scientific, and because of them this age is being called the age of science.
In Science and Health (p. 313) Mrs. Eddy has said that "Jesus of Nazareth was the most scientific man that ever trod the globe." Do his words and deeds prove this to be true to us of this scientific age? Did he not eliminate useless processes everywhere? He knew that the making of bread need not involve the preparation of the soil, the sowing, harvesting, grinding, kneading and baking, with all the time and labor involved in the human process; and through the application of his higher intelligence the finished product was immediately supplied. Did he believe that man must, through a long life of matter's oppression, suffer, sicken, die, and be brought to life again, in order to gain a state of harmony somewhere beyond? He told his hearers again and again that the kingdom of heaven is at hand,—"within you,"—and when he saw a mortal who had yielded to the belief that death was his inevitable end, he declared that such a state was but a dream; he turned upon the problem the intense intelligence of a mentality that understood whence he came and whither he went, and demonstrated the living man.
