Christianity can have but one object, and that is redemption. It is redemptive both in Principle and in practice. Its whole purpose is to bring about complete satisfaction, or happiness in the fullest sense of the word. As a consequence it provides no period of waiting and prescribes no processes of suffering antecedent to the fullness of its joys. It has no theories by which complete salvation can suffer procrastination for a single hour. No factors other than Truth and the infinite ideas which reveal Truth are essential to that redemptive method of pure scientific Christianity, given to the world by Mary Baker Eddy in Christian Science. Consequently prophecy, considered in the light of Christian Science, assumes aspects unrecognized by any other system of religion. If the mission of prophecy were merely to tabulate future events chronologically and await their coming, or if it were true that what the prophets saw in mortal mind must inevitably happen, then Christianity would not be redemptive at all; it would be fatalistic; and that this is exactly what it has been to the Christian world, is constantly being illustrated. Let some unusual disaster happen to mankind, especially if it be of such a nature as to involve nations in war, then some one is pretty sure to inform us that it was foretold in the Bible, and therefore had to happen.
Now such theories are not only hopeless, but they tend to make mankind helpless. They give to Christianity the artificial aspects of fatalism and mysticism which belong to paganism only, whereas Christianity as explained in Christian Science is open, clear, and free as the noonday. It is founded upon Principle, God, and is demonstrable according to pure spiritual law.
For this reason its blessings are not to be postponed. They have their being in God. They are His plan and purpose and express His omnipotence and omnipresence. For this same reason one does not have to wait for them. In order to possess all things which Jesus said the Father hath given to the Son (Principle has given to idea) only one thing is essential, and that is enlightenment.
