After traveling thousands of miles from Tokyo to Ankara, talking and listening to scores of Asians while lecturing on Christian Science in the East last fall, Geith A. Plimmer remembers one experience which begins to answer these questions for him.
"In Taipei," Mr. Plimmer began, "I went for a walk in the woods and saw a Chinese sitting under a tree, studying. He exchanged my greeting warmly and showed me his book: a text on mechanics and physics, printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This struck me as being symbolically very interesting. Here in this isolated spot was a man with only a modest education, struggling to read in a foreign tongue a textbook devoted to scientific principles. This situation touched me. My recognition that these people really are the children of a scientific age—an age in which Mrs. Eddy stepped forth to reveal the Science of being— awakened in me a natural feeling of Christian care. We in the Western world should be touched with a longing to help Asians by appreciating them and helping them forward through the best Christianity we can develop."
If a lecturer visiting nearly all the Christian Science churches, societies, and informal groups in Asia does a lot of talking, he also does a great deal of listening, especially to the nationals there. Some of these are Christian Scientists, some are only inquiring for the first time. "Quite frankly," said Mr. Plimmer, "I learned more about Oriental beliefs this way than I did studying actual texts on Asian religions. These people had the kinds of problems I could easily have encountered in my London office. But there are areas where Christian Science might impinge on sacred family beliefs. Here great wisdom is called for: to keep the precise scientific nature of our religion quite clear, but with such love that they aren't frightened by its demands before they get a chance to love the truth itself. Jesus told the story of a man who found a treasure in a field and sold everything he had to buy it. It's quite clear this man must have had a long enough time and a clear enough vision to learn first of all to love the treasure."
