A Speaker at a recent Wednesday evening meeting in a Christian Science church discussed his spiritual selfhood with the confident familiarity of more or less complete achievement. An inquirer who listened to the testimony remarked that, after all, the speaker had gone home on two material legs and in a material street car. The inquirer appeared not to have been helped by the testimony, but rather to have received an impression that Christian Science had failed to heal at least one of its adherents of a tendency to indulge in self-adulation. This conclusion may have been unjust. The speaker may not have lacked honesty so much as wisdom. Certainly the man in the Bible who could say only, "Whereas I was blind, now I see," had a more useful concept of a Christian Science testimony.
Students of Mrs. Eddy's writings know that she recognized the insufficiency of material language to express spiritual ideas, and that she was careful to protect the earnest inquirer from misinterpreting her statements. Surely her followers are not justified in being less careful than was she. During a number of years the writer had occasion to review public utterances in unfriendly criticism of Christian Science. Nearly always the critic would try to make Christian Science appear absurd by lifting out of its explanatory context some statement of our literature concerning the perfection of spiritual realities, holding this up to view as if it had been uttered with regard to mortal man or material things. Obviously the favorite method of those who wish to misrepresent Christian Science cannot be used to make Christian Science clear; yet is not that what is attempted by the ultra-metaphysical Wednesday evening testifier who talks of the deep things of Spirit without apparently considering that the uninformed visitor, for whose benefit primarily the meeting is held, may interpret these statements of absolute truth only in terms of materiality, with confusion as his reward?
The Master knew better. He made clear distinction between that which might be uttered within the spiritual closet and that which could be said helpfully standing in the synagogue. To those whose spiritual sense had been awakened sufficiently to understand that he was not referring to a material body, he could say with healing conviction, "I and my Father are one." "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." To the materialistic multitude his spiritual teaching took the form of simple parables and healing.
