Some uninformed people have mistakenly believed that Christian Science has not participated sufficiently in general social service. The fact is that the activity of demonstrable Principle for the benefit of all is boundless. This activity of Principle is what constitutes Christian Science and true social service alike. In other words, the whole function of Christian Science is social service, in the true meaning of the term. Whatever really expresses Principle must bless the whole world in a way that is far from theoretical.
The only way of accomplishment is through the expression of intelligence. The mere doing of supposedly material things in a supposedly material world is not progress. The most comprehensive program for bettering, through human means, the human conditions of the slums, for instance, approaches the problem from a limited, mortal view. The right way is to prove that the divine Mind governs the entire living of the real man and thus reduces to nothingness the limitations of illusory mortality. By turning to infinite Mind first and by applying the reasoning of this Mind to whatever seems to present itself as a problem, one is serving both God and his fellow men. So to serve would not be possible if one were thinking only in terms of the wretchedness of human seeming.
What social service does Christian Science perform at the time of an epidemic of disease? At such a time, the actual healing of those who specifically rely upon Christian Science for help is the smallest part of the work. Every bit of understanding of divine Principle in the community operates as a preventive and corrective, inevitably replacing the belief in an epidemic of evil with an overwhelming epidemic of good. As Mrs. Eddy says on page 229 of "Miscellaneous Writings": "If only the people would believe that good is more contagious than evil, since God is omnipresence, how much more certain would be the doctor's success, and the clergyman's conversion of sinners. And if only the pulpit would encourage faith in God in this direction, and faith in Mind over all other influences governing the receptivity of the body, theology would teach man as David taught: 'Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.' "
