THE recognition in Christian Science that there is but one source of truth, whence radiates all that is real, beautiful, and good, impels the inference that every impulse for better things which has wrought itself into the web of human progress has, in an important sense, registered the divine appearing. We are thus led to explain revelation as the result of an opening, or at least a thinning of the enveloping mists of mortal sense through which the ever-present light of Truth has found its way into human understanding. Submitting all impulses and aspirations, whensoever and wherever found, to our Lord's test, "By their fruits ye shall know them," the student of history is led to entertain a thought, a value-estimate of many of the sages and their sayings, which is very different from that to be gained by inquiry as to how much they knew of what we may have been taught to regard as the all-inclusive truth.
From this broader point of view Socrates, Epictetus, and kindred seers are seen to have apprehended in some degree the eternal verities, and to have manifested a far nobler spirit than that of many professed Christians. Mrs. Eddy's statement that "whatever inspires with wisdom, Truth, or Love . . . blesses the human family with crumbs of comfort from Christ's table" (Science and Health, p. 234), is more clearly understood in the light of this thought of the continuity of Truth's appearing in all eras and in such phase or form as the general advance of the race or the aspiration and struggle of a given individual has made possible.
Further, if all good is of God, every idea which has contributed or is contributing to the real betterment and advance of mankind merits recognition for what it is at heart, regardless of its faulty expression. The fact that it may be imperfectly grasped, that it is being manifested under human conditions which seem to distort and handicap it, or that its phenomena have pertained to the so-called secular life,—no one nor all of these things should lead us to forget that all real good, as all truth, is one; that throughout the centuries the divine activity has been maintained, the seeking Christ has been knocking at every door.
