Articles

Has material medicine satisfactorily answered the age old query, How shall the sick be healed? Confronted by the problem of disease and its cure, men have turned to matter, to drugs, to "other gods;" but have these solved the problem? Apparently not, since there is more disease to-day, or rather there are more names for diseases, than ever before in the world's history. The Christian Scientist has no quarrel with the physician but Christian Science, as a system of healing disease.

It goes without saying that the earliest manifestation of the acceptance of Christian Science is usually seen in a desire to learn the contents and meaning of the sacred Scriptures. This instinct—if we may call it so— may be a new one, or it may be an old desire rekindled and stimulated by the addition of fresh objects to the student's quest.

One of the things demanded of Christian Scientists is that they shall "maintain law and order" (Science and Health, p. 97).

We are taught in our text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," that "if God had instituted material laws to govern man, disobedience to which would have made man ill, Jesus would not have disregarded those laws by healing in direct opposition to them and in defiance of all material conditions" (p. 227).

Whenever one has been entertained for a few hours or longer by a friend, he seeks to impress upon the host his gratefulness for the hospitality and good cheer extended to him. In a greater measure do we constantly feel it a duty to express our appreciation of the exceedingly helpful publications of our Church, those welcome visitors which entertain us instead of being entertained by us.

The word theology has lost its charm. The reason for this is clear,—its original meaning was "the thought of God;" but it has wandered far away and some of us have wandered with it.

It is not easy, speedily to bring into the right way the man who has a long time previously been held fast by error. It may, however, be effected; for, when a man turns away ever so little from error, the mention of the truth is acceptable to him.

Not the least of the blessings which attend the study of Christian Science is the improvement wrought in our thought concerning time, that ebb and flow of life, as we have always regarded it. A popular expression such as "the prime of life" will gradually fall into disuse as the understanding of the eternal source of life develops and leavens the materialism of human theory.

" To rejoice evermore" and "in everything give thanks" is, from the human point of view, a well-nigh impossible undertaking. Mortal man is sometimes heard to say that if he had no more to contend with than do most of his acquaintances, it would be a comparatively easy matter for him to rejoice and give thanks.

Critics of Christian Science have sometimes taken exception to the use of the term Science in this connection, on the ground that the adherents of this system refuse to submit its practical operations in the healing of disease to the test of clinical observation and experimentation, conducted in accordance with the requirements of the so-called "laboratory method" of research. That the great bulk of human learning has ever been uncertain and transient will be admitted by every student of the history of thought, for not only have standards of scholarship and criteria of knowledge undergone constant modification, but at intervals they have suffered the most radical and revolutionary departures.