THE conception of Christianity which Mrs. Eddy gave to humanity, through the Christian Science text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," manifested not merely the vastest scope, but contained the most practical application of the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth that the world has ever known. It answered what Lord Morley has described as the magnificent cry of the greatest of the encyclopedists, in a way never even contemplated by its author: "Détruisez ces enceintes qui retrecissent vos idécs! Élargissez Dieu!" The great rationalist might call for the enlargement of God, but how was it possible to enlarge a God in the image and likeness of man? The attempt could only end, in men's minds, in the appalling picture described by Matthew Arnold, of a huge non-natural man governed by men's passions, even though these passions might assume Protean shapes, ruling an underworld pictured in all the horrors of the fancy of Fra Angelico, and lifting the heavens above his outstretched arms in the mystic imagery of Blake.
When Mrs. Eddy recoiled from the anthropomorphism of scholastic theology, and defined God as Mind, as Spirit, or divine Principle, she made it possible for men to begin, even within the limitations of human intelligence, to grasp something of the infinity of God, and so, in a moment, she raised the whole conception of Christianity to the level of that marvelous phrase which occurs so often in the New Testament, and is as persistently mistranslated; namely, the full, the exact, and so the scientific, knowledge of God, who is Truth.
It is the aim of Christian Science to give the world a scientific and therefore a demonstrable grasp of absolute Truth. Such a grasp, if it is to be Christian, must of necessity be a return to primitive Christianity, in a form adapted to the requirements of modern conditions. Such an effort means inevitably a break with convention, and so actually fulfils the two requirements laid down by d'Alembert as a necessary prelude to an elucidation of true thinking: first, a disregard of authority; second, an abstention from premature systemization. It was to these very precautions that many of Mrs. Eddy's difficulties in the past were owing; it is to these that much of the opposition of today is due. It is, indeed, Mrs. Eddy's determination to feel her way to a system, by a most careful means of induction based on the collection and examination of innumerable facts, that has given Christian Science its scientific basis. Anybody who will study her career will realize the essentially experimental nature of her work. She began with a view of science not unlike that of the world in general, but she began to question authority here, with the result that she entered the labyrinth of the human mind like some Theseus, grasping a spiritual clue until she found the Minotaur of materiality and exposed and slew it with the realization of the allness of Spirit and the consequent unreality of matter.
