ON page 327 of Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy says, "Reason is the most active human faculty;" and it is in part because Christian Science appeals primarily to the reasoning faculty that it has in barely half a century gained such a hold and made such a vast impression upon human nature. This also helps to account for the continued and wonderfully steady growth of the movement. Other movements, by their appeal to the emotions, the senses, or the superstitions of the race, may perhaps have temporarily produced a more showily effective, dramatic, or even picturesque effect, not only upon their own adherents, but upon the history of the race; but Christian Science goes to work silently, surely, and even slowly, like the leaven to which it has so often been compared.
When the whole world is sufficiently leavened by truth, then, and not until then, will it wake up to the real significance of what has been going on in its midst; then, and only then, will it recognize that the "kingdom of heaven" is indeed within man's consciousness. It is quite possible that there may ensue something like a stampede for truth, and Christian Science will be put upon its greatest trial, for it has now become a truism to say that persecution is less dangerous than popularity.
Just as reason is the most active human faculty, so also is it the most silent. Reason never shouts or screams, or raises its voice above the level of the "still small voice." Nothing is more exquisite than the silent utterances of Truth, grandly symbolized in the great wonders of nature; the silent growth of a forest; the silent pull of the magnet; or the silence of the heavens, where great worlds whirl with incredible swiftness through unimaginable spaces with less noise than a gnat buzzing across the room. The great King Solomon, with all his wisdom and in spite of his much preaching, must have realized this fact; and it was not for nothing that his temple was built as it was, without sound of hammer or chisel, when "like some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung." Let us, then, heed the appeal of Truth given through the prophet Isaiah, and "let us reason together." Let us examine the reasonable appeal of Christian Science, but before doing so let us take off our shoes of pride, personal opinion, prejudice, and egotism.
