A FRIEND writes to tell of an ex-clergyman who said to him in the course of conversation: "I consider that my education began only when I commenced to study Christian Science." Large numbers of intelligent and cultured people are in the same position. Until a little while ago they had no idea of the subject and only took it up for the sake of abusing it, for somehow the sight of these two words, "Christian" and "Science," in apposition, provokes a spirit of resentment in the modern mind which seems to bespeak a natural repugnance to this particular correlation of ideas.
Until quite recently the combination of the terms always occasioned controversy. But times have changed, bringing with them a greater capacity for individual thinking; and, as a consequence, people who begin by abusing Christian Science usually end by admitting that there is something in it, even if they do not go the length this clergyman did, of declaring a new-found interest in life. Certainly it is a new thing in the world of our day to hear of healing through the power of spiritual understanding. We had become so accustomed to the use of other means! The claims of medical science, especially in the realm of surgery, had so captured the imagination that the association of spirituality and therapeutics seemed nothing short of blasphemy or inanity. On the other hand, we were always ready to admit that God cures by many means,—climate, good company, and change of scene were all regarded as aids to faith and recovery; and when prayer failed, as too often, alas, it did, there was always the resort to a change of occupation, or a rest.
Now, happily, we are able to see how illogical was this position; to see also what a contradiction it involved. For the first thing Christian Science usually does for any one is to open his eyes to the logic of the new situation. It soon becomes evident that if God ever heals, then He must heal all, in the sense that He is able and willing to heal all; and, since God is unchanging good, His means are always the same, otherwise God is limited and divided, a statement which is impossible, because unthinkable in regard to Him. Thus we begin to see that our whole conception of the Deity has undergone a change, and it is this new concept of God which leads to the acceptance of the healing truth. For, if God is All,—the all-Mind, the all-power, the all-good,—then there is nothing to prevent any one of us from receiving the abundance of good in the healing that comes from God. Mrs. Eddy has stated this position with convincing logic in "Unity of Good" (p. 7), where she says that "an acknowledgment of the perfection of the infinite Unseen confers a power nothing else can."
