A MULTITUDE of people once gathered in a desert place to listen to a great teacher and, even more wonderful, to see him prove his words by healing the sick. Evening came, and the people needed sustenance before beginning their journeys homeward. Did this great teacher theorize to the hungry people about food, offering them vague abstractions to speed them on their way? No, demonstrating his own superb conviction that the loving Father of all, divine Principle, meets every human need, Jesus, the great Teacher, fed them bread and fish. It is recorded that he then sent them on their way and went up into a mountain alone to pray.
Centuries later, Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, after making this observation, "A child will demonstrate Christian Science and have a clear perception of it," asked, "Then, is Christian Science a cold, dull abstraction, or is that unscientific which all around us is demonstrated on a fixed Principle and a given rule,—when, in proportion as this Principle and rule are understood, men are found casting out the evils of mortal thought, healing the sick, and uplifting human consciousness to a more spiritual life and love?" ((Miscellany, p. 113.)
The self-evident answer is of course that Christian Science is not a vague, cold abstraction, because its teachings are being proved daily in many healing ways by individual Christian Scientists the world over. Thus Christian Science verifies its name by being the actual, the provable, Science of Christianity which Jesus taught. Only that which is demonstrable is Science; hence it proceeds from divine Principle, God, the one, unchanging source of law in the universe. Human theories shift and change, but the eternal laws of God withstand the ebbing and flowing tides of centuries of mortal systems of learning, philosophies, and sciences.
