The Christian Science church was organized as a Mind-healing church, and the life and substance of this church is truly the spiritual understanding demonstrated individually by its members in healing the sick, the troubled, the sinning. The individual and collective light of this understanding constitutes the appeal of each branch church to its community. As in Jesus' time, so today, the multitudes seek the "works"— the proofs of promises, "the Word . . . made flesh."
Those who came to Jesus with diseases and perplexities were healed. Matthew relates that as a consequence "there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judæa, and from beyond Jordan." Again and again, the Gospels inform us that Jesus was followed or pressed by multitudes. They came to him because he was demonstrating that spiritual understanding which awakens from illusion, which heals. They came to Jesus and were satisfied. They obtained their respective healings, and they told their neighbors. Jesus fed his listeners with no idle words; he gave them the bread of spiritual understanding, and they knew it was such bread, for it healed them.
Similarly, it was the works the healing proofs of Christian Science given by Mary Baker Eddy and her early followers—that firmly founded the Christian Science church. The fruits of Christian Science were impressive. Many with illnesses pronounced incurable by physicians were healed. It was observed that the study of Christian Science transformed men and women from petty, narrow, selfish, envious, jealous, fearful, discouraged, hateful thinking to persons holding to a joyous, confident, unselfish, co-operative, much enlarged outlook on life; that victims of sinful or disagreeable habits were quickly regenerated by this new-old truth. The business world soon began to recognize that Christian Scientists were valuable workers, for they had learned how to be true givers. And as the world has watched these good results, the Christian Science church with its redemptive work has won increasing appreciation and opportunities.
