NO genuine reform is ill-timed or superfluous. In the inevitable march of progress old systems are worn out and cast aside, once cherished theories are forsaken, and time-honored laws are superseded and forgotten. Humanity awakens to a higher need which must be met upon a higher plane; and some devoted man or woman leads the way up the new heights a rugged road, a martyr's road. These pioneer reformers have been crowned by after ages with glory and honor, but the world forgets that its first homage was jeer and ridicule, and its first crown plaited with thorns.

In the deep darkness of materialism and corruption into which the Jewish church had fallen, in response to the world's greatest need, Jesus came with the gospel of the Christ. He came that men might through him be resurrected from their material beliefs; he led the way up the divine heights where men worship the Father "in spirit and in truth." It was a rugged road, a martyr's road. The Jews had long been waiting and watching for him; and when he came with the sweetest and holiest message ever brought to man they said, "He hath a devil." He came preaching the gospel of Life and Love, healing the sick and raising the dead; and they scourged and crucified him. Pilate sent to the cross the one man who could answer his question. The world has not changed; the human heart has not changed. The question, "What is Truth?" is still on the lips of men, but if one be found to answer, they cry "Away with him."

In the blood of the martyrs and the persecution of the saints the early Christian church was established. For a time the gospel was preached and the sick healed in accordance with Jesus' commands. But factions and dissensions arose; royalty became the patron of Christianity; it became popular; the lust of worldly ambition crept in, and on the altar of temporal power and dominion the church sacrificed her consciousness of Christ's power and presence. Christianity became a mere name; the church became a synonym for despotism, intolerance, and avarice. Luther stepped out from its domination and Christendom was divided between Catholicism and Protestantism. The latter in its turn became intolerant and persecuted its dissenters; and the Puritans stepped out from Protestant domination, and on the shores of free America raised the standard of religious liberty.

Factions and dissensions have arisen in the modern church; it has become subdivided into numerous sects; the parent stem of orthodox theology has sent out many branches, but they are fundamentally the same. The hungry, weary hearts of earth have come to them but found no fruit thereon, nor rest and shelter in their shade. Perhaps never before has Jesus received such universal outward homage; art, poetry, music, literature, even the modern novel, have voiced his praise. Men are everywhere calling him "Lord, Lord"; but they do not the things which he said. Christianity has become little more than a name, an intellectual idea.

While we respect and honor all earnest effort in the church (I use the word in its collective sense), we cannot be blind to its palpable inefficiency to cope with the evils of the age. Its creeds and doctrines do not satisfy the needs of men. It has no solution for the problems of the present in the present. A belief in salvation in a future world does not solve the problems of this; the promise of heaven after death does not lift men out of their hell on earth. If faith in Christ will not give man wholeness of mind and body here, what reason have we to believe it will hereafter?

The creeds of the church are based on the dogmas of Jesus' vicarious atonement as saving, those who believe on him from an eternal hell, and the everlasting consignment to it of those who do not; but a man must die to prove them. Humanity demands more than that. Men out of the church who do not subscribe to its beliefs may be as pure in morals, as honest in business, as upright in society, as men in the church who do subscribe to them. The heathens who have never heard an orthodox sermon may keep the spirit of the Ten Commandments better than the Christians who go to their land. Are these the evidences of Christianity?

There is something radically wrong when for all the problems of vice, poverty, disease and despair the church has no more practical solution than salvation after death. Has death become the savior and regenerator of man? or has omnipotent God no jurisdiction upon the earth? The prodigals in the far country of error prefer the husks of their sensual pleasures to those of empty theories. The bruised and suffering heart of humanity, below this seething wretchedness and degradation, is yearning for the Christ that will lift them out of the miry pit of sin and disease now, not when they die; but with all the world's intellectual progress, its scientific advancement and increase of wealth, with nearly nineteen centuries of Christianity and Christian preaching, that yearning has not been met, the sum of vice has not decreased, poverty and wretchedness have not lessened, and sickness has not abated. If the modern church's interpretation of Christianity cannot satisfy the wants of men it must give place to a higher. The need must be met; Jesus did not live and die in vain.

And Christian Science has come. Quietly, meekly, but surely it has taken its place in the van of religious progress and civilization. It comes in the divine order, and through the one divinely appointed. It has entered the lists to do battle with the Goliath of error which for so many centuries has held the church in check. It teaches the regeneration of man through the destruction of all error; that the Principle of Christianity is as demonstrably true to-day as when Jesus taught and practised it on the shores of Galilee and the hills of Judea. It presents a practical interpretation of the gospel of Christ as adequate for all the needs of men, here or hereafter; and substantiates its teachings by "many wonderful works."

Surely the church, which for so long has been preaching in his name and looking for his second coming, would open its doors and welcome this higher idea of the Christ; and would trim and fill its empty lamps and go forth to meet the bridegroom! Oh, no; the world has not changed. Ignorance, bigotry, dogmatism, these are the same whether Jewish or Christian. The spiritual idea is thrust out of the synagogue as "of the devil." "If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household?" Christian Science leads the way up the divine heights where men worship the Father "in spirit and in truth"; but as of old, it is a rugged road, a martyr's road.

These many centuries the churches of Christendom have been satisfied with the forms of godliness without its power. They have formulated certain "articles of faith" and set them up as so many graven images; not to bow down and worship them is heresy. The sweet, potent spirit of Christianity has been smothered in endless folds of ritual and ceremony; the true import of the life and death of Jesus has been buried under tomes of speculative theology and man-devised doctrines. And when Christian Science puts aside this mass of useless verbiage and would restore Christianity in its primitive simplicity and power, it is thrust out of the synagogues as a blasphemer. Men cling with unreasoning obstinacy to worm-eaten systems and dead creeds and resist the claims of a living, saving Truth.

Christian Science rejects the dogma of Jesus' vicarious atonement in its popular acceptation; and the religious world indignantly protests. No royal road to Heaven on another's shoulders? no sinning till the eleventh hour, a quick repentance, and a passport through the "pearly gates"? no enjoying the pleasures of sin to be forgiven of its punishment through another's goodness and suffering? It is blasphemy. The belief that pardon and Heaven may be secured through another's sacrifice is a soft pillow, and the church has slumbered upon it for centuries. The law of reaping what we sow is inexorable; and Jesus said that not one jot or title of the law should fail.

Christian Science accepts the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as exemplifying the at-one-ment of God and man; not as relieving him of his own responsibility and work, or saving him from the effects of his wilful wrong-doing. Jesus lived and died and rose again that man might know the way to God; but man must walk himself therein, must keep his commandments, must take up his own cross and follow in the Master's footsteps, else the atonement has no efficacy. Jesus and his apostles so taught; is it blasphemy to teach likewise? Does it detract from the glory of his sacrifice? If Jesus did man's work for him and accomplished his salvation, why do his professed followers still continue in the bondage of sin and disease?

To the world, plunged in the darkness of the belief that evil is real, personal and powerful, Christian Science comes with the good tidings that God is All-in-all, the only Life, Truth, Substance, and Intelligence of the universe, including man; and modern orthodoxy is horrified. No real, personal devil on whom to shift the responsibility of man's temptation and fall? Yet Jesus so taught; "There is no truth in him." Does the belief in evil bring men any nearer to Good, by which alone they can destroy their sense of it? Why should men argue for the actual existence of a person whose power is inimical to purity and goodness? As long as men endorse the claims of evil, personal or impersonal, as valid, so long will they be its servants. There is not room in space for two infinities. God does not divide His kingdom with Satan, else He could not be wholly Good; if evil could exist in spite of Him, He is not omnipotent. If the church would display the same zeal and energy in acknowledging the supremacy and Allness of God, Good, that it does in defending the claims of evil, it would bring the kingdom of Heaven much nearer the apprehension of mortals than it has yet done. It surely is not blasphemy to so acknowledge God's infinity as to exclude all sense of evil.

To sick, suffering, diseased humanity Christian Science comes with the gospel of health and peace. It teaches that the healing of sickness and sin is the natural and necessary concomitant of true Christianity; and the apostles of "faith without works" are alarmed. The pulpits of Christendom would soon be empty if the ability to heal on a Christian basis were made as necessary a qualification as the ability to preach. Jesus commanded his followers to "Preach the gospel," but he also told them just as emphatically to "Heal the sick"; healing is a part of his gospel. Ministers of the church obey the first command as best they know how; when were they absolved from the second? It is idle talk to take refuge in the threadbare assertion, "The day of miracles is past"; when did it pass? The experiences of thousands to-day deny it. Were the sick in Palestine so many centuries ago in greater need than the sick in every land to-day? What right has the church or its ministers to eliminate this part of Jesus' gospel and set it aside? What authority has it to say that its mission is only with the souls of men, but that their bodies are beyond the control of God and man, governed by the blind laws of matter? What right has it to pass by the works of Jesus as of no practical import to after generations, and pervert his words into mere intellectual beliefs, and wrangle and divide about the letter of His teachings while they ignore their spirit? Thousands of professing Christians are trying to subsist in weak, diseased bodies on the stones of an impotent faith; what right have the ministers of Christ to withhold from them the "bread which came down from heaven" that they may be made "every whit whole"? The power, the presence, the salvation of God is not centred in any one locality or in any one age. Religion is nothing if not practical; it is hypocrisy if not practised.

"Is any sick among you? let him send for the elders of the church." (Jas. 5: 14.) Suppose the sick in the church send for their pastors; how many would undertake a case? How many would trust their own case to the efficacy of their prayers? Is it not strange, very strange, that after nearly nineteen centuries of Christianity men are so uncertain of nothing as the effect of their prayers? They send them out into space with no certainty of any reply coming back; they have no reliance upon them as a certain help in time of trouble. Prayer has become a religious duty, not an actual, reliable force. If men pray for their recovery from sickness they supplement it with a powder or pill lest their prayers should not be answered. Has the church more faith in the mythological god of medicine than in the living Christ of their creed?

A man has no fear or doubt if he presents a government note but that it will be honored for its full face value; he is certain of it for he has proved it. Is it not a sad travesty on Christianity that while its adherents have perfect confidence in the promises to pay of a human government they feel no certainty as to God's? "God is not a man that he should lie." (Num. 23:19.) "Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver thee." (Ps. 50:15.) Will God not honor His own word that His professed believers do not present His promises with the certainty of their fulfilment? Have the spurious claims of patent nostrums and poisonous drugs more influence with "nature" than the word of God? The power and willingness of God to heal was demonstrated by Jesus in the first century; is His arm shortened that He cannot save in the nineteenth? Is it not sadder still when Christian Scientists come teaching and demonstrating His power and willingness to heal to-day that they should be denounced by Christian ministers as blasphemers?

To humanity, fettered by the belief in matter and its supposed laws, Christian Science comes teaching the actuality of all creation as spiritual, and the consequent unreality and illusiveness of what is termed matter; that Mind is supreme and that matter has no inherent virtue; that all disease and suffering are in the human mind and can only be removed through all understanding of divine Mind, God. It is thus at issue with all forms of materia medica. The belief in the superiority of matter over mind enslaves man in sin, disease and death. Materia medica has had the field of therapeutics for four thousand years or more; what is it to-day? It is divided into many and opposing pathies; it has discovered no fixed principle of drug power, no specific remedy; doctors of the same school disagree; what will cure one will kill another; its most eminent practitioners denounce the use of drugs in unsparing terms; what is it but a confused system of speculation and guesswork not science? Diseases have increased in number and fatality, while the average of human life has fallen from eight or nine hundred to thirty-three years. It is not to be inferred that this is the result of medical practice, but it proves its inadequacy to cope with the ills and ailments of men. But if, as Christian Science avers, all sickness is the result of sin, what possible aid could a drug afford in removing sin?

After these four thousand years of failure to establish a science of material medicine, Christian Science offers a solution for the difficulty by changing the principle and practice of therapeutics from matter to Mind; and it is ridiculed as absurd. Surely its large measure of success merits a kindlier reception. Blind and bigoted antagonism to a new philosophy or a new discovery in science does not imply their falsity. The ignorance and conservatism of Galileo's time forced his unwilling recantation, but that did not stop the revolutions of the earth. If Christian Science after its few years of practice can advance stronger evidence of its efficiency than materia medica after its four thousand, why call it "absurd"?

Professor Ršntgen's discovery in photography has been received with open arms by the scientific world; it was not ridiculed because it was contrary to all previous conception of "law." A few have tested and demonstrated it, and the world has taken it on their testimony. It was the new discovery of an old principle. Christian Science is the new discovery of the eternal Principle; all men may test it for themselves. It is the new old gospel of Christ, and is of infinitely more moment to mankind than the discovery of the "X-rays"; is it not equally deserving of honest investigation? Is the testimony of no value of the thousands who have tested and demonstrated it? Men dissect its teachings from an antagonistic point of view, not in the search for Truth. It is a stumbling block to ecclesiasticism because it exposes its barrenness and lack of spiritual vitality. It is foolishness to the "schools" because it is beyond the reach of their intellectuality. The illusive testimony of material sense and the sophistries of the human intellect are of no importance when dealing with spiritual forces and realities; these must be assimilated in spiritual growth to be understood.

Christian Scientists have no time for controversy, even if it were profitable. Multitudes of weary and heavy-laden, sin-sick and body-sick, are waiting at the beautiful gate of the Temple, and to these, as far as they are able, Christian Scientists are giving of the bread and water of Life; and they are being refreshed, strengthened, and made whole, while the modern Scribes and Pharisees are standing aloof, wrangling over points of doctrine and "neglecting the weightier matters of the law." Let the church of to-day pause in its condemnation, and rather close the lips in humility of shame that it has drifted so far from the commands and example of the Master. Let it not barter spirituality for unsaving doctrines, but rather blot out the dead letters from its statute book, or breathe into them the breath of living faith.

A new era has begun. Struggling hope and faith have triumphed over centuries of ignorance, fear and superstition, burst the bonds of dogmatism and loveless creeds, and are blossoming into strength and fragrance in the sweet morning sunlight of a new day. Christian Science has come, and come to stay. King Canute of old could as easily set the limits of the ocean as can the opposition and ridicule of to-day stem the tide of Truth which has come to man through the understanding of Christian Science. Hatred, malice, envy, will lash themselves into impotent fury; there will be "wailing and gnashing of teeth" in the "outer darkness" of evil belief; the whole universe of error will upheave and struggle in the throes of its extinction; but the tide of Truth will steadily flow, rising higher and higher till the last mortal sense shall be submerged, and from human consciousness shall be cleansed by the pure, sweet waters of Life, Truth, and Love the last vestige of error, sin, disease, and death, and man be forever revealed as the image and likeness of God.

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