THE really independent thinker has ceased to sneer at Christian Science. He may retain all his skepticism and his allegiance to sense appearances; he may continue to order his life and conduct after the most approved philosophy of the materialist; and he may at times even feel a sense of supreme pity for those worthy people who are taking their idealism into actual practice; but a tolerant respect has given place to scorn. The undisputed evidence before him of the world-wide and permanent growth of the Christian Science movement has taken the contempt out of him, though it may have left him unconvinced. As a student of human affairs he might well ask, How has it been accomplished, and what does it signify for the future of the race?

Springing up in the soil of one lone, brave woman's faith in God, and nourished by her unfaltering fidelity and love, in an age of material absorption and with no visible succor or support, what but the blessing of God could have produced such wondrous growth? The tiny seed has become a great tree giving rest and shelter to thousands of weary pilgrims on their way home. Critics on all sides have shot their sharpest shafts against it; it has been plied with ridicule, with sarcasm, with invective; the orthodox pulpit has denounced it in the name of God; it has been subject to persecution and attempted proscription. What but divine sanction is responsible for its great growth and increasing acceptance among men? What system or reform unprotected by God and bereft of His approval, could have stood against the tides of bitter opposition, and the storms of human hatred that again and again have beaten against it? What man or woman whose heart was not pure and good and true, who was not spiritually near to God and supported by His grace, could have stood alone in the face of an unfriendly world and have battled for years with the unloosed powers of evil, and conquered, as the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science has done?

Less than thirty years ago there was not one Christian Science Church in the world; there are now over two thousand organizations, including many which own large and beautiful buildings. These church buildings are dedicated free from debt, and the services are well attended; the members of the Christian Science churches are at least up to the average in intelligence and culture, and much above the average in health. It is certainly true that very many of these people have been redeemed from a hopeless invalidism, or from the depths of sin, through the healing power of Christian Science. These are every-day facts that cannot be laughed or argued away, and the world has been forced to recognize them and make a place for Christian Science as an important factor in human affairs.

The secret of the great growth of this movement is not far to seek. I think it is found in this, that Christian Science makes a present, every-day, tangible fact of that which the religious world has left to poets, and to the Christian's hope and dream of heaven; viz., the reign of good in man. The religious thought of past and present has designated as too good to be true the things which are the Christian Scientist's daily articles of faith and conduct. To the consistent Christian Scientist God's actual presence on earth and His willingness and ability to help in all trouble, are as tangibly within his reach as are the telephone or the electric car, though to our brethren of other faiths this may seem as strange as the telephone would have seemed to our fathers of a century ago. The theory of the telephone would be just as visionary to a man who had never talked through one, as the theory of Christian Science to one who has never tested it. No matter how it may conflict with sense education or prejudices to converse and be heard a hundred miles away, the man who has done this, knows. This fact to him is more than all past opinion or practice to the contrary. May it not be so with Christian Science?

Driven through paths of pain and sorrow and want and sin by what has seemed to be the relentless laws of existence, in the despair of unanswered appeals to every material power, mortals reach at last the willingness to seek God, even on earth, as a possible Saviour from woe; and right here is where Christian Science has entered into the lives of most of its adherents. If it failed them then, ‹ if after their years of defeat and disappointment in the material modes and means approved by all the traditions of their fathers, ‹ by scholastic knowledge and religious training, ‹ if after all this, a system so despised and scoffed at as Christian Science failed them; if it gave them not the ease of body and peace of mind they sought, would they have believed it or espoused its cause? Would the so-called lower classes, with little thought outside their dreary round of monotonous toil; would the so-called upper classes of the rich, the educated and refined, with the luxuries and amenities of human life at their hand; would the hard-headed, wide-awake man of commerce, who does not deal in day-dreams or visions; would the lawyer and the judge, keen and alert in discerning facts and cautious in accepting truth, ‹ I say would all these, or any of these, have stepped out from the rule and practice rendered well-nigh sacred from immemorial custom, and made up the ranks of Christian Science, if they gained nothing? ‹ nay, rather, if they received not more than they ever possessed before? Would the numbers of men and women whose position placed them above the suspicion of being enthusiasts, have remained in Christian Science if they did not find therein the supply of all their needs and the fulfilment of all their hopes? Right here is where the world wonders, and the honest thinker has lost his scoff. The palpableness of these facts, and the stubbornness of their continuance, have despoiled the critic and the would-be wit of both arrow and target.

Who can rightly gauge the significance of this movement, with its increasing exodus out of godless materialism into the living hope and faith and joy of spiritual being? The yearning of the race after God, the desire for a higher sense of life and joy than is found in bodily existence, is met and satisfied in Christian Science. Students of human history, of sociology, of political economy, of theology, and of medicine, are all vitally concerned in the success of Christian Science, for in it is contained the fulfilment of all their prophecies and aspirations and dreams, though on a higher plane than they have dared to hope. It unfolds the cause and source of all the ills which have laid their load of suffering upon the race and disrupted the brotherhood of man, and the remedy therefor. This may seem a sweeping statement but it is not unwarranted when it is known that Christian Science is the science, the demonstrable knowledge within the reach of all, of the rules and teaching of the Christ. Every follower of our Master must admit, as even the infidel has admitted, that the teachings of Jesus Christ, if practised, cover the whole range of human need, and provide the only atonement whereby man may recognize on earth his sonship with his Father in heaven. Good, earnest men and women of differing eras and beliefs, have prayed and suffered and died for the establishment of that living faith in God which is the corner-stone of Christian Science. The time was bound to come, in the very immortality of Truth, when the same power which "ushered in the Christian era with signs and wonders" would be discovered in the oblivion to which a material religion and medicine had consigned it, and appear again to the perception of those who have eyes to see. All that the most ardent Christian Scientist claims is that this time has come.

The human need of Christian Science signifies that Christianity has been only partly understood, else God would not have been forgotten in times of trouble; and that in its perfect practice men may find their dominion over sin made possible, and the healing Principle of Jesus daily at their hand. In the success of this movement all false systems, whatever is not the outcome of good, whatever has usurped in the hearts and minds of men the allegiance due to God alone, all these may read their certain end; for simultaneous with the growth of truth in the human mind is the decadence of error. God alone is responsible for His work. If He has set His signet on Christian Science through its beneficent healing and reformatory influence, Christian Scientists have no need to be ashamed. The state of thought whose eyes are closed will fail to see the beauty and sweet reasonableness of Christian Science, and may even credit Beelzebub with its benison of good; but the man of open mind, the untrammelled thinker, will see in the magnitude and impetus of this great spiritual movement the beginning of a new era for the race; an era of emancipation from matter, from the bonds of superstition, from all that separates man from his conscious supremacy over evil, and his eternal unity with good, as God's son. And happy shall he be who shall discern the sign of this time, that Christian Science is the "reappearance of the Christianity which heals the sick and destroys error" (Science and Health, p. 98).

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