FROM various pulpits and in the press we are being told that Christian Science the religion in which God' is the only healer is wrong; that it is a mistake to take Bible promises too seriously; that it is folly to draw practical conclusions from the premise of God's allness; that Christ does not heal any more except through drugs and surgery, and so forth.

Physicians of every school, in all kinds of practice, are continually finding themselves up against a stone wall, so to speak, which they cannot get over, or through, or around, and confess themselves helpless, if they are honest, and the majority of them are. They have reached the point where no medicinal, surgical, or other human aid can avail. What then? To whom shall appeal be made when man has failed, and God has been set aside?

A short time ago the question was asked, What would life be like now without Christian Science? The thought was startling, life without Christian Science! And straightway there rose up before me a vision of what life had been without Christian Science. Thought traveled backward fifteen years or more, when the shadow of disease lay heavy upon me, blotting out the gladness and bright prospects that should belong to youth; my well-loved books and studies were laid aside, cherished plans' ruthlessly destroyed, and so, for ten long, weary, restless, longing years that dark shadow never lifted. Materia medica did what it could, in vain. Every available human remedy that offered hope was tried, in vain. Years of praying to God had brought no tangible result. None but myself has ever known how bitter were the disappointments and mental anguish of those years. But God answered my prayer; quietly and gently as a summer shower Christian Science came into my life, watering the dried roots of hope to bud and blossom. Gradually the shadow lightened, the burdens lifted, and the chill of the long night went out before the warmth of dawning Love. The vision had changed. What need to ask such a one what life would be like without Christian Science? Dear God of mercy, who would lift the cold hand of law, or of theological proscription, to blot out this changed vision, or withhold from other darkened lives the blessed touch of God's Christ in Christian Science?

This is no isolated example. In thousands of homes in our own America, in the old world, in the islands of the sea, there will go up a responsive thrill of joy and gratitude as these lines are read. A great multitude who have come up out of great tribulation, who have passed through the deepest waters of affliction and the darkest shadows of disease and sin, will utter a fervent amen as they read. And I ask, were we all healed in the wrong way?

Is there a materialist so material as not to sympathize with our joy and gratitude? Has Christian Science an opponent who could wish to remand any of this vast number to their former unhappy, unhealthy condition, because he considers Christian Science the wrong way to heal? With no thought of personal superiority, and with no malice of heart, I would ask our tradition-wise and book-learned critics, How should we have been healed? Materia medica could not heal us, and I say, it in all kind remembrance of their good intentions; our religious beliefs and associations did not save us, and I say it in all tender love for the Christly efforts of all churches. What did the healing? and was it a mistake that we should have been healed in this way, who had no other hope? Can that be a wrong way which succeeds where all others fail?

And then there is that other great multitude, "whom no man can number," who are still bearing the heavy burdens of disease and sin, and abide in the gloom of untempered sorrows. Let me ask you doctors, who with all well-meaning efforts are laboring for their ease and cure, how should they be healed when you can do no more? And you ministers, who have preached to, and prayed for, and pleaded with, the victims of impure and debasing habits, how should they be reached when your best efforts fail? And you who interpret human law so that it abridges religious liberty, tell us what should be done with those whom man cannot heal, that you would deny them the right to appeal to God alone? And you critics, who are descanting on the follies of Christian Science, and carping over the literary style of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," through which the divine light of Christian Science is shining in blessing upon humanity; you who are trying to belittle the work and pure motives of that gracious and lovely woman, Rev. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, will you not tell us what should be done with those unfortunates who have done all that materia medica has directed, but all in vain? Would you deny them the possible hope of an appeal to that which your own wisdom may not accept? May not God be found outside your pharmacopoeia, and may He not have a way unknown to medical science which would be a right way of healing the sick and the sinful?

Christian Science healing is right or it is wrong. Will those who hold that it is wrong kindly tell us what these despairing "incurables," consigned to death by materia medica, should have done that they might have been healed in a more profitable way? Did the writer err in judgment when he turned to Christian Science and was healed, and would it have been wiser had he accepted the fiat of materia medica and so have been dead, or in deeper misery, instead of enjoying a larger sense of life and health than before? Wherein was the wrong we committed, or the wrong of the Science that healed us? Wherein does Christian Science practice transgress the laws of God?

If the medley of material systems, inaugurated and supported by the human mind, be the right method of healing, no other would be required, and it would surely be an error to abandon it for the supersensual healing of Christian Science. The method appointed by divine Wisdom is governed by unerring Intelligence, cannot be excelled, and produces good only.

Then if the host of men and women who for years had been dosed and drugged and rubbed and electrified and hypnotized, and cut, and maimed, to be finally turned adrift in helpless despair, if these were deluded and deceived in being healed by Christian Science, what diviner way could they have resorted to, since man-made means could do no more? In the name of sweet pity and of a common humanity, if the critics and denunciators of Christian Science know of a better, wiser, more Christ-like, more satisfying way to heal earth's hopeless sufferers, to bring joy and comfort to them that mourn, to strike off the shackles of vice and appetite, why will they not demonstrate it to the world? Heaven and earth would bestow upon them their richest benediction.

Through all the hubbub of this busy world, the frantic rush for gold, the din of commerce, the mirth and madness of society, the babel of learning, through all the tumult and the turmoil is heard an endless cry of anguish, which goes up from countless hearts as one unceasing prayer to God, shall it never be answered? Shall Love sit smiling on its throne and move no hand to save, while the suffering multitudes grope blindly among their dried roots and herbs, and chemicals, to find the Principle of Life, that shall restore their disordered sense of being? Does the wisdom of our critics find no higher resort than a drug store in their search for the Principle of Nature? Have they no higher hope, no loftier thought of God, in their distress of mind and body?

I give glad and true testimony that after eight years' close acquaintance with Christian Science, during which time I have passed through the stages of opposition, ridicule, criticism, and acceptance, I have yet to find in it a single suggestion of evil influence or tendency; but rather I have ever found that where it has touched my thought and life its whole influence has been to purify, to make less sensual and less selfish, to spiritualize thought, exalt ideals above the body, produce the sweetest health, and enlarge the sense of God and man.

If our critics have not found a better way which they are prepared to demonstrate to the world; if their attacks on Christian Science, based wholly upon ignorance of what it really is or wilful misrepresentation, only express a blind opposition to higher progress and spiritual reform, let me ask in all sincerity and love what is the cause they are contending for, and whom do they seek to exalt in the place of God? We have the Master's authority that it is more Christ-like to save than to condemn. It requires neither wisdom nor love to condemn, while it requires both to save.

Human wisdom does not know God; we are told that it is foolishness to Him. To condemn what God blesses is surely the supremest folly of worldly wisdom. To have all faith in God cannot be displeasing to Him, and He will certainly succor those who confide their all to Him. Will not our judges await in peace the verdict of time, which accords to all their proper place? Who can, say that Christian Science may not be the angel which God, Love hath sent to close the mouths of the lions of disease and want and sin, but which no human power has yet bound or tamed.

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