The world has been witnessing for almost five years the most tremendous upheaval, perhaps, in its history. Outwardly the eruption assumed the form of a great war in which all the devices of engineering skill, all the resources of modern natural science, were employed; but beneath the surface, and essentially, the struggle which took place during these tragic years was one between truth and error, or good and evil. The last fifty years had been among the most subtly material in the world's history. Darwinism had reached its zenith, teaching that in matter with its so-called mysterious forces lay almost all the possibilities of racial development,—a doctrine which tended to eliminate the spiritual with its altruistic tendencies almost entirely as a factor in human progress. Free rein was given by this teaching to the pursuit of studies purely material in their nature: hence the discoveries of over half a century were mainly the outcome of the theory that matter was real substance, possessing tremendous power regulated by law, law as yet undefined but nevertheless operative.
While this effort was being made by modern natural science, something else was happening in the world. For many centuries Christianity had been misunderstood and perverted. The enthusiasm of the early Christian church had passed away with the coming of Constantine, as had the power of Christians to heal the sick through spiritual understanding, a feature so prominent in the work of the Founder of Christianity, Jesus the Christ, and also in that of his immediate followers. Formalism, ritual, and dogma had occupied the place of the spontaneity of spiritual understanding and the recognition of every man's right to commune directly with God; in short, the simple truth about God and His creation had been lost. Everybody knows what this meant to the world. Instead of bringing peace and joy and gladness and healing, as Christianity should have done, time and again the erroneous sense of its teachings brought upon humanity the very opposite of these,—sorrow, sickness, and death. It is true that during the last century evil may not have appeared to be operating as blatantly as it had done in some of the preceding centuries; it had, however, only assumed new phases, and these as subtle as ever, although to some they may have seemed more innocuous. Matter, in other words, had become the god of humanity to a far greater extent than ever before.
Now a wonderful thing happened in 1866. In that year Mary Baker Eddy discovered the Science of being, or Christian Science; and thus at a period when materialism was approaching a climax, there came to the world (in a form which was systematized so that all could readily follow it and understand it if in earnest) the absolute truth about reality,—the truth, that is, about God, the divine Principle of spiritual existence. The world, if it had only known it, had received a gift the like of which had not reached it since Christ Jesus blessed it with his inspired teaching and consummate demonstrations of Truth. For what happened was that the greatest revelation ever made as to the nature of God and His creation had taken place; and, consequently, a corresponding knowledge had resulted with regard to so-called matter or evil. Christian Science had come to save the world from its belief in the reality and power of matter or evil by revealing the truth about God, divine Principle.
