BELIEF in the so-called miracles is a large factor in religious faith, hence anything which tends to disturb it, militates directly against the prevailing conviction of and hold upon Christian verities. Furthermore, the disappearance of the traditional phenomena attending the activity of an assertedly divine law, tends to beget a spirit of incredulity respecting the historic actuality of such phenomena, since our human experience of the unvarying continuity of law warrants the expectation that under normal conditions it will give an account of itself, without regard to times or seasons.
It is not surprising, therefore, that in the absence of kindred phenomena in the church at large the higher critics should have reached the conclusion, to the great distress of many, that the credibility of the gospel statements in this respect is not so firmly established as Christian believers have assumed. To be satisfying and effective, religious faith must be more substantially supported than it finds itself when the works on which the Master assured John's disciples of the genuineness of his Messiahship, and which he said his disciples were to continue, no longer attend Christian ministry.
Logic is immediate and unreserved in its assault upon any dogmatic teaching, however generally accepted, which is not supported by practical, present-day demonstrations of its verity, and it is just here that Christian Science has rendered the Christian world a service of immeasurable value, one which, despite the stupidities of inherited prejudice, is' rapidly coming to be appreciated. When Mrs. Eddy furnished incontestable "proof, by present demonstration, that the so-called miracles of Jesus did not specially belong to a dispensation now ended, but that they illustrated an ever-operative divine Principle," and that "God will heal the sick through man, whenever man is governed by God" (Science and Health, pp. 123, -195), she dated a great spiritual awakening and wrote the charter of a new Christian commonwealth. In this she placed all spiritually aspiring men and women under a debt of obligation which they are bound to recognize in due time, and which can be liquidated only as they prove for themselves and for all mankind this possibility of freedom from sickness as well as sin through the power of the word of Truth.
