About eighty years ago Mrs. Eddy made a prediction. "If the lives of Christian Scientists attest their fidelity to Truth," she wrote, "I predict that in the twentieth century every Christian church in our land, and a few in far-off lands, will approximate the understanding of Christian Science sufficiently to heal the sick in his name. Christ will give to Christianity his new name, and Christendom will be classified as Christian Scientists." Pulpit and Press, p. 22
Today, as we approach the opening of the fourth quarter of the twentieth century, many contemporary Christian Scientists wonder if they have the spiritual strength to live up to the demand for fidelity made upon them in this prediction if it is to be fulfilled. But they can be comforted. God supplies all the spiritual qualities we need to perform the tasks He has for us to do, and we can prove that we do have all that it takes to do our part if we will only claim it.
On the wall of Mrs. Eddy's house in Chestnut Hill still hangs an engraving of a picture by Edwin Long. The original painting, first exhibited in the Royal Academy in London in 1881, is entitled "Diana or Christ." It depicts a young girl, a Christian, standing beside an altar dedicated to the goddess Diana at Ephesus. The girl's lover and the priest of Diana are trying to persuade her to drop some incense on the altar as a symbol of her renunciation of Christ and loyalty to the goddess. A stern Roman judge sits nearby, apparently waiting to pronounce sentence on the girl if she does not comply. Her punishment was presumably to be thrown to the wild beasts in the arena.
