The Hon. Clarence A. Buskirk,
C.S., of South Bend, Indiana
Member of the Board of Lectureship of The Mother
Church,
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts
Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, was born near the city of Concord, New Hampshire. She proved herself to be a profound and far-seeing thinker, an earnest humanitarian, a close student of the Bible, a noble Christian woman. She has made a new epoch in the history of religious thoughts. Like every great moral and religious leader whom the world has ever known, she has been misunderstood and misrepresented. But the loftiness of her purposes and the greatness and beauty of her life have rendered all attacks upon her vain and ineffectual; and her name and memory are now in the sunlight of an assured triumph. Her memory is surrounded and defended by the gratitude arising from the thoughts of hundreds of thousands throughout the earth, whose lives and homes like my own, permit me to say have been blessed by her teachings. All her writings are distinguished by their high moral and religious atmosphere, by their relentless logic, and by their inspiring honesty of utterance which never falters nor swerves aside from its straight path in order compromise or propitiate.
Her blest reward the millions who are won
To happier lives, the work which she hath done
Hath carved her name among the earths immortals,
Beloved Chief, whose work hath just begun!
It has been less than 40 years ago that Mrs. Eddy published to the world the first edition of what is known as Christian Science text book. The title is "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." This truly wonderful book has been to the thirsting hearts of great multitudes of human beings like a beneficent rain after a protracted drought. To study its pages in the truth-seeking spirit, whether the reader accepts or declines to accept its teachings, is educational; for it is sure to broaden, to elevate and to purify one's horizon of thinking. The writings of Mrs. Eddy set forth the entire doctrine and practice of Christian Science. For Christian Science has no hidden mysteries. It is needful to study the Bible at the same time, whatever your preconceived notions may be in respect to the Bible.
In its brief history the Christian Science movement has accomplished a growth and exhibited a vital energy which has been a source of joy and gratitude to its adherents, a source of bewilderment to its opponents, and a source of admiring astonishment to all thinking people throughout the civilized world.
History shows that established institutions and businesses have always been opposed to new institutions. They do not like the risk of being disturbed or endangered. The Christian Science movement has had to confront conspicuous obstacles from this source. Besides it has had no help outside of itself. No princes nor potentates nor conquering armies have assisted it, nor paternal legislation. All its forces and activities have been developed within itself. Nor has it appealed to the fears or excitable emotions to gain followers. Its appeal is made to its array of unimpeached and unimpeachable facts, and the sure conclusions to be drawn therefrom; to man's highest reason and spiritual discernment, and the confirmation which is found in the pages of the Bible. It is a circumstance which not infrequently has been observed and kindly commented on by those outside the movement that the lives and homes of its adherents have been made better and happier, and that there is surely something in Christian Science which makes for right living and good citizenship. Are not then its friends justified when they say that the message and mission of Christian Science are for the betterment of mankind? What does it mean that already throughout the United Stales and our neighboring Canadas, not to mention England and other countries, there are hundreds of thousands, with their numbers rapidly and steadfastly on the increase, who are gladly and gratefully declaring, at every fit time and place, that they are beneficiaries of its teachings and practice, morally, spiritually, physically, and indeed in all ways?
Is it not plain that these witnesses and beneficiaries have surely found in Christian Science the open door to vitalizing truths which have been at work leavening their thoughts and lives? Is it not plain that they have found some practical help in their lives which they greatly prize? Something which has surely lessened their pains and sorrows and brought more gladness and light into their homes? The mission of Christian Science has but fairly begun, so short has been the time; yet a great moral awakening is going on throughout the world, and higher incentives and ideals in life, and a more wholesome outlook upon life and its duties and privileges are discovered to have percolated extensively into many strata of humankind, in an age which otherwise seemed to be greatly demoralized. Of course, there are no statistics or figures in this connection; and therefore I cannot claim that the beneficent influences at work in the world are to be referred to the Christian Science movement. But I can do this I can challenge your attention to the significance of the circumstance that the same sort of influences are demonstrably at work in Christian Science homes and lives everywhere. Is not this a most extraordinary age? May it not be the age destined to witness a grand moral and religious awakening and renaissance? If so, what better instrumentality than a religious philosophy which is for our every-day lives and needs, as well as for the life to follow? A religion which proves what it preaches, and demonstrates the trustworthiness of its words by its practical works under our eyes?
It is a noteworthy fact whose significance ought not to be overlooked, that the following in Christian Science is made up to a large extent of those who were at first incredulous in respect to it, and especially in respect to its practical works. The proof has so accumulated throughout Christendom that these practical works are in daily and abundant evidence, that the denial of them has been overwhelmed and silenced. But our opponents frequently asserted up to a few years ago that Christian Science cured those only who merely imagined themselves to be sick, but no others. This assertion itself was founded on imagination and not on facts, for the evidence proved from the outset that so-called incurable, organic as well as functional, and chronic as well as acute diseases were met and vanquished. For a time, however, this assertion, too often rashly made by those whose positions should have made them more careful about their statements, were listened to. There were many persons who manifested complete indifference, as there are yet. Besides, the world had for a long time been so accustomed to drug medication that any method which did not employ drugs seemed to be beyond their comprehension. Not the only instance when "the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." However, notwithstanding indifferent and skeptical ears, the facts and their evidence began to accumulate; slowly at first, and afterward with greater and still greater rapidity.
Those who had been sentenced themselves to speedy graves by materia medica, on account of so-called incurable diseases; those who had near relatives, husbands, wives, children, sisters, brothers, fathers, mothers, under similar sentences, very largely composed the class who first ventured, as it seemed the last chance left them, to try Christian Science. And, lo! usually to their great surprise, the doors of a great joy were opened, and the sentences of death were canceled. "Such glad tidings" spread fast. Soon all kinds of physical sickness and sufferings and many sorts of vicious habits and tendencies were found to be knocking at the doors where they hoped, many of them just barely hoped, to be made free. Thousands have been delivered in this way from the very gutters of alcoholic drunken and restored to lives of sobriety and usefulness and to the arms of their families. In our larger cities especially there are no inconsiderable numbers who have been assisted in overcoming the use of opium, morphine, cocaine, chloral and other vicious, habit-forming drugs. There are now unnumbered scores of thousands who have been lifted up from long years of pain and apparently hopeless invalidism. And there are a multitude of witnesses of the class to which, permit me to say, I belong. We have seen the grim visitor which men call death shadowing the thresholds of our homes and threatening to bear away fading loved ones from our family circles; we have heard our physicians despairingly admit that their efforts were all in vain; and then, through this rediscovered way of saving sick, "the way, the truth, and the life, to which we have at last gone, our loved ones have been restored to our arms, with the roses of health once more blooming in their cheeks and the light of health again beaming from their eyes! Is it any wonder that in our gratitude we repeat the words of Jesus: "Though ye believe not me, believe the works"?
The great body of the adherents of Christian Science thus far is made up of those for whom its truth and dependability have been tested in a practical way, in their own persons or homes. On the other hand, our critics are made up of those who have prejudged the subject according to their preconceived notions and beliefs. Their theories of denial are not based on the evidence, but rather are those theories of denial which are based upon beliefs already held those theories of denial, in fact, which have opposed and hindered every forward step in human thinking and progress always. Which is better and safer, the experimental knowledge and experiences of Christian Scientists, on the one hand, or the individual opinions, on the other hand of those who oppose Christian Science, whatever their reason for doing so? Which class of evidence has weight in the court-room? Is it not that of the witnesses who know the facts about which they testify; while opinion evidence is seldom received at all?
In speaking of the class of our critics I have just referred to, critics who turn stubbornly deaf ears to our evidence and stubbornly hostile eyes to our facts, refusing to be convinced thereby, whatever the evidence and facts may be, like the opponents of Jesus in in his day, I find that I need frequently to remember tolerance and charity rather than severity or importance. Probably this may come from my being a courtroom lawyer for many years. But I hope that it will not be out of the way for me to say of the class of critics I have referred to, who even when "convinced against their will, are of the same opinion still," that they remind me of the Indiana farmer who was asked what color he wished his barn to be painted, and who answered: "I'm not particular about the color, jest so you paint it red."
I am not unaware of the fact that a great many friendly and sincere listeners in an audience like this would like to get more light on the subject of the process or modus operandi through which sickness as well as sin may be met and overcome without drugs, in Christian Science. I might content myself with several good and truthful answers to these questions, all of the answers quite brief. I might answer that Jesus used always the same spiritual process for overcoming sickness and sufferings which he employed to overcome sin. So if you will explain the Christian method which was employed by Jesus to overcome sin you will explain the process by which he overcame physical discords. And this would be a true answer, so far as it goes. It goes far enough to silence, at least, any unfriendly critics who are Christian believers. But there has grown to be a large number of men and women who are really religious-minded but have become more or less skeptical in respect to Christianity, largely because they have found themselves unable to accept certain dogmas. Such people can say that the answer I have just stated is not an answer for them. Yet I wish to call their attention, as well as the attention of Christian believers, to the great significance and value of the fact of multitudes being healed in this age by a mental process which is identical with the process of healing which it is claimed by Christianity was also successfully followed by Jesus and the early Christians.
If the fact of such healing at this time stands now fully and unanswerably supported by the evidence, then the skeptic is silenced from affirming any longer the improbability of the same works when attributed to Jesus and his early followers. And, on the other hand, when the Christian believer asserts that he accepts the truth of records in the Bible and in profane history which state that such works were accomplished by Jesus and his early followers, such Christian believer is thereby silenced from affirming the improbability of similar works now, unless he repudiates the plain promise of Jesus when he said, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also." The Christian Scientist says to the skeptic: If the fact stands that certain healing works are being done now under God's eternal and unchanging government, you cannot be heard to say that like works could not have been done at a former time. Likewise, the Christian Scientist says to the modern Christian: If you believe certain healing works were done at a former time under God's government, you cannot be heard to say that like works may not be done now. To the skeptic we say: What is true now always was true, for truth never changes nor perishes. To the Christian we say: What the Christ truth stood for in the first, second, and, third centuries of the Christian era when the Christian healing was accomplished, it surely stands for in this twentieth century; for truth is of God, and, like God, is "the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever," and "with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."
Delaying for a few minutes the further consideration of the questions in respect to the process or modus operandi employed in the Christian Science healing of sickness as well as sin, I wish to say at this point that for a time I was amazed when I heard some good and sincere Christians opposing the Christian Science works of healing. I said to myself, is it possible that they can overlook the fact that these healing works are wresting one of the strongest weapons from the hands of infidelity? But I investigated further and found the responsible cause of such opposition is in the fact that for fifteen centuries the Christian world had not been healing the sick, and had found itself unable to heal the sick, according to the Christ way therefor. I found that great and good men, like those pioneers of early Methodism, the two Wesleys, for example, had earnestly sought to rediscover the lost Christian way of healing sickness, but had failed, notwithstanding their anxiety to recover the means by which they could realize the promises of Jesus and obey his commandment in full: "Preach the gospel," "heal the sick." I could not doubt the most earnest desire to come up to the standard which Jesus had established for his followers in his words: "If ye love me, keep my commandments." The inability to heal the sick for fifteen centuries uncovers the reason for the incredulity of some Christian people about any one else healing the sick according to the way therefore, which was promised, exemplified, and commanded to his followers by Jesus. I saw the explanation for the willingness at times of good and sincere Christians to accept as an excuse for their non-obedience to the command, "Heal the sick," the really unscriptural and illogical dogma which was invented and first heard of in the fourth Christian century, namely, "The days of the miracles have passed."
History clearly shows that the Christians continued successfully to heal the sick, that is, according to the Christ example therefor, during all of the first, all of the second, and all of the third centuries of our Christian era. Then began the decadence, and soon came the practical disuse, of the Christ way of healing. Into Christianity about that time the pagan dogma had been introduced that sickness and death were of deific origin. A moment or two further along I shall show why one who believes that dogma cannot heal the sick as Jesus taught. But before that let me show how that false and disastrous dogma got its entrance into the belief Christendom.
Around the beginning of the fourth century there was a general influx from paganism into the Christianity of the Romans and Greeks. This vast influx followed the conversion from paganism to Christianity of the Roman Emperor, Constantine. After his conversion, the power, pomp, and prestige of the Roman empire then the most powerful and extensive empire on earth became identified with Christianity. It seemed to the Christians of that period that the cause of Christianity had received a most auspicious and valuable accession. But it proved to be a disguised catastrophe. For it was then that the pagan dogma of the divine causation of sickness, suffering, and death fastened itself to the Christian theology. The Romans and Greeks had been taught in their pagan systems of religion the doctrine of polytheism and so had come to believe in the existence of many deities. They believed that some were good deities and that others were evil deities. They believed that to their evil deities were to be imputed all the phases and presentments of evil afflicting mankind, including physical sickness, sufferings, and death.
This brief of the deific origin of disease and death they carried with them into Christianity, just as they carried some of their pagan ceremonials and holidays. We need not wonder so much at this when we note how men are always showing a disposition to shift to other shoulders than their own the responsibility for their own faults. This disposition manifested itself when Adam said it was Eve who tempted him, and Eve said it was the serpent that tempted her. That convenient way of trying to dodge the responsibility of our own faults has been in quite constant evidence ever since. The majority seem to find that it is soothing to their consciences to attribute their sins to the temptations of the devil and their sicknesses to God. If you should swindle some widow out of her property, how nice it is for you to say to yourself that you were tempted to do it through the influence of Satan, instead of confessing to yourself that you are a disreputable sharper. If a boy eat green apples and, according to the prevailing notion about such things, he should suffer from "appendicitis" (it was called by a different name when I was a boy), and a surgical operation can be paid for, and the boy fails to recover therefrom, how nice and comfortable it is for the whole affair to be disposed of at the funeral by the statement that sickness and death are "mysterious dispensations of divine Providence!"
This smooth and convenient phrase has for its parentage the old mythological belief that some evil-minded deity visited sickness and death on human beings. But the old Pagan notion was more logical than its modern offspring, which imputes human ills to a good-minded deity.
Jesus taught, and reason teaches, the very opposite of the dogma which imputes sickness and death to a deific origin. He declared that his works, referring to the overcoming of sickness and other human ills, were the works of the Father, not of himself, and that of himself he could do nothing. These words describe God as the very opposite of a Supreme Being who afflicts His children with sickness, suffering, and death. The words of Jesus plainly show us that he regarded God as He is described to be in the Old Testament, the "great Physician," and as He who "healeth all thy diseases." Then take the words of Jesus, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." The office of truth is to free us from falsehood, not from what is true. If sickness or any phase of evil were consequent to the will God, then such sickness or other phase of evil would be the truth of man's being, and the truth could not free him therefrom.
Let us look at the matter from the viewpoint of plain reasoning for a moment. If sickness were "a dispensation of divine Providence, what would be the use of trying to get well? You would be trying to thwart the divine purpose in trying to get well yourself, or in seeking to restore any one else from sickness. Surely you cannot reason that God causes you to be sick. If you really believe that God, either through some law of nature (and there are no laws of nature apart and distinct from the laws of God), or by some special divine interposition in your case, causes you to be sick or to suffer in any way, for any divine purpose whatsoever, is it not both a supremely wicked and a very foolish thing for you to do to turn a rebel against God and seek to defeat the divine will and desire? Or, do you try to reason that God is infinitely good, and yet sends sickness and death upon his children just to see whether or not they will escape the grave for a few days? Did you ever see a cat playing with a mouse, pretending to let the miserably frightened little creature escape for a while, only to crush it remorselessly at last? Is that your idea of God? Surely, Jesus never taught such a god as that when he brought to mankind his gospel of divine Love!
Sickness, like sin, is of human and not of deific origin. Sickness, like sin, is man-made, not God-made. Sickness, like sin, not being any part of God's creation, is not a truth but a falsehood in God's universe, not a realty but a false human consciousness. Sickness, like sin, comes to men when they separate themselves in their consciousness from divine truth. Therefore, Jesus taught the true and dependable remedy for sickness, as well as sin, when he promised to us the power of truth to make us free. And the facts in the first three centuries of our Christian era unite with the facts of this age in the history of Christian Science, to prove that the remedy taught by Jesus is the true and dependable remedy both for sin and sickness the self-same remedy for both, the divine truth-cure.
Our Christian churches of other denominations recognize that sin is of human origin and has nothing divine about it. May the time soon arrive when they will teach the same truth in respect to sickness and other phases of evil! Then, and not till then, may we expect that every Christian church on our planet will be a beneficent center from which shall radiate the Christ teachings to overcome all the discords which men have brought upon themselves through separating themselves in their thoughts and beliefs from divine Truth and harmony. Every Christian Scientist knows that a necessary thing to do in the effort to be free from a vicious habit, or a sinful tendency of any kind, or physical sickness or suffering, is to understand and realize that such phenomena are, each and all of them, no part of God's creation, and therefore they do not belong to the relations between man and the government of God, and are no parts of the truths of man's being.
Now let us return to the questions which are so frequently asked in respect to the process and its operation through which humankind may be delivered of physical as well as moral discords according to the Christian way therefor. Please remember that I have given one brief answer, namely, that if one shall explain this divine process in overcoming any phase of sin, then the explanation thereby has been given in respect to any phase of physical discord, for the reason that Jesus always used the same process in dealing with sickness which he used in respect to sin. Let me follow this with another brief answer, which also is true as far as it goes. When Jesus said the works were the works of the Father that was equivalent to the statement that the process is one of infinite intelligence. From this it follows that we must rest content with our learning and understanding enough of it to realize his promise and to obey his command in respect to healing the sick, even though our finite intelligence may not fully grasp all the seeming mysteries of the process.
And that is no more than just what we are doing every day in respect to nearly all processes about us. From time immemorial men have had to learn that they must accept a fact as a fact, when sufficiently proven to be a fact, whether they do or do not comprehend it. They have had to learn that a fact is not invalidated or falsified because of any failure on their part to understand it either in whole or part. For example, the great electrician, Edison, admits that he even cannot define just what electricity really is. A valuable instance to bear in mind in this connection is, that when wireless telegraphy was first talked about seriously, a few years ago, educated electricians scouted it as impossible. They did it too incautiously however; for wireless telegraphy is now a proven and accepted fact. And no one denies it to be a fact merely because there are some seeming mysteries about it which are not fully explained.
And now let us see how far we can get in seeking to comprehend the divine truth-cure which was taught by Jesus for overcoming physical disease as well as moral disease.
What we are talking about when we talk about sin? We are talking about a phenomenon of the human mind. Paul termed this human mind the "carnal mind," in order to make his viewpoint clearer, Mrs. Eddy terms it "mortal mind" to make her viewpoint clearer. Sin is a phenomenon of the human mind, or carnal or mortal mind, through its separation from the truth of being. For sin is not a truth of being; else we must say that God creates sin, which would be contrary to the Bible and our highest reason, which says that God is good and that God's creations and resultants all must be good likewise. Sin then, is the absence of divine Truth. And what I have said about sin, I wish to say about sickness. The human mind, carnal mind, or mortal mind declares that the body is sick. The body is incapable of declaring itself sick. Take the human mind away from the body, and that body is incapable of declaring that it has rheumatic pains. That declaration is made by the human mind. Jesus overcame sickness as well as sin with the truth because the statements of sin and sickness both come from the separation of the human mind from the consciousness of Truth. When a person says, "I am sinning," and when he says, "I am sick," in both instances alike he is saying that he is separated in his consciousness from Truth. The right consciousness of God, that is, of Truth, can have no sense of either sin or sickness. Neither of them is any part of God's creation or government. Truth knows nothing of either sin or sickness. Hence, Jesus destroyed both sin and sickness with the consciousness of Truth.
How do you proceed to correct a mistake in addition? You know that there is a true rule for adding figures correctly. You know there is no rule for adding them incorrectly, and that if you add them incorrectly it is because your thought is separated from truth. And your remedy is to restore the truth to your thought. Your mistake is the absence or negation of truth. It will not help you in the least to study the magnitude or quality of your mistake. You can only correct your mistake by understanding and obeying the affirmative truth in the rule of addition. Suppose the musician evokes a discord from his instrument. He is aware that there is no law or rule for discords, and that they are mere negations of the truth or rule of harmony. So he wastes no time on the discords. Indeed he avoids doing so, because that could only tend to fix the discords in his memory and consciousness, and thereby make him more liable to their repetition. So, instead of studying the discords, he fixes as firmly as he can in his consciousness the harmony he desires to express from his instrument. Sin and sickness are negations of Truth or God. These negations, like all presentiments of evil, have no truth, law, nor government behind them or sustaining them. How shall we proceed to correct them? Not by studying and dwelling upon their magnitude or quality, any more than the musician studies and dwells in his consciousness upon his discords. In sickness, to study and dwell upon the physical symptoms, may lead, and usually does lead, to fixing them more permanently in the consciousness from which they need to be expelled. We must fix in our consciousness the affirmative truths of being, just as the student of addition fixes in his thought the truth in order to correct his mistake, and as the musician fixes in his consciousness the truth of the harmony in order to correct and avoid discords. And proceeding in this same manner the preventive is employed as well as the remedy; the experiences of the mathematician, of the musician, and of the Christian Scientist teaching that to apply the truth to correct mistakes helps us to avoid such mistakes afterwards.
Now let us take another step. We are all aware somewhat of the constant and powerful influences of our thinking upon our bodies. We know thinking changes the circulation of the blood, affects the nerves, may reduce the flesh, influences the cells, etc. The maiden's cheek is suffused with a blush, the pulses bound with joy, the cheek pales with fear, or the heart may stop its pulsations altogether. All our bodily functions are similarly affected by our thinking. Our nostrils are dilated, we breathe more rapidly or more slowly, our legs weaken, and tremble or become more elastic and energetic, our perspiration becomes more profuse or perceptibly diminishes, the voice becomes low and nearly inaudible or assumes unusual loudness and vigor, the stomach seems to crave some remembered foods or rebels against food, and may even reject it, and so on to a greater extent and degree than many of us have ever thought about, all as the effects of the mind over the body. Solomon epitomized universal human experience 4000 years ago when he said that as a man "thinketh in his heart, so is he." Right thinking helps us physically, and wrong thinking harms us. Paul truly wrote: "To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace."
Now let us take another step. How can we most effectually free our consciousness from the thoughts which are false and harmful, and how can we most effectually uplift and energize the thoughts which benefit us? Here again we find the answer applies to both sin and sickness alike just as Jesus taught and exemplified. It is the self-same process for sin and sickness. What we need to do, then, is to bring our thoughts and consciousness into closer communion with God. And the way to that has been pointed out to us by the example of Jesus and in the words of the New Testament so plainly that we need make no mistake.
However before considering the plain way I have just referred to for getting into closer communion with God, let me ask the question strange as it may sound to your ears, Is it really safe and wise if you are sick to seek a closer communion with God? Suppose you believe the old pagan dogma of the Greeks and Romans which they brought with them into Christianity, that sickness and death are not of human but of divine origin. Or suppose you believe the modern theological statement which is the same in its meaning that sickness and death are "mysterious dispensations of divine Providence." Then it would be safer for you, would it not, to keep as far away as you can from the deific power which deals out to mankind sickness, sufferings and death? Is it any wonder that with such a conception of God the sick could no longer be healed, during about 15 centuries, according to the way demonstrated and promised by Jesus to his followers?
Now what is the way pointed out to us for getting into closer communion with divine truth, in order that the truth shall make us free? There is only one way pointed out to us in the Bible, and this way is the only way approved by human experience. This only way is true prayer. We need to pray to the true God, and not with the concept of some death-dealing pagan deity in our consciousness.
The office of true prayer is not to change and better God, or God's ways. That cannot be done, for God is eternal and immutable. The office of true prayer is to change and better man. That can be done. Prayer is not a physical, but a mental attitude. When we pray aright to the only true God, we are communing in our thought and consciousness with the truths which belong to man's relations with God and with the laws of God which unchangingly govern man. In such communion with the truths of man's being we assimilate the truth which "makes us free" as Jesus promised and proved free from sin and sickness which are entertained in human consciousness when such consciousness has become separated and apart from the consciousness of truth. Thus comes the experience, as Paul described, that "to be spiritually minded is life and peace."
Thus our good thoughts which conduce to physical as well as moral well-being become our very best thoughts. In all true prayer to the true God our thoughts, aspirations, hopes, ideals, incentives are uplifted to the purest heights they are capable of attaining. And right here is the explanation of the fact which is constantly mentioned and gratefully commented upon by those who are healed of physical sicknesses through the agency of Christian Science namely, that they are benefited morally and spiritually as well as physically. And here is likewise the explanation of the fact that sin and sickness, as Jesus and his early followers proved, and as Christian Science is proving, are overcome through the same process.
One of the immediate apostles of Jesus said: "The prayer of faith shall save the sick." These words point out to us the means or process whereby the divine truth-cure which Jesus taught is accomplished. However, we are frequently admonished not to pray amiss. It is when we pray aright that we realize the promise of our Galilean brother and Way-shower: "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."
We pray amiss, and words are naught;
But when we rightly pray,
Men cannot measure with their thought
The wonders of Gods way.
First count the myriad stars on high,
Proud man, before you dare,
With all your vaunted tools, to try
To map the realm of prayer.
[1915. In none of the nearly 20 newspaper reports of this lecture examined by this web site is the lecture's title given. It was common in the first couple of decades of the 20th century for newspapers to omit the title of a lecture and simply to say that it was a lecture on Christian Science. The title above is proposed on the basis of a report in The Los Angeles Herald on May 12, 1913, summarizing the lecture in about a half dozen paragraphs, in which Christian Science is placed in quotes as if it were the title: "'Christian Science' was the subject of a lecture given before a large audience in Shrine auditorium yesterday afternoon by Hon. Clarence A. Buskirk, C.S. . . ."]