William D. Kilpatrick, C.S.
Member of the Board of Lectureship of The Mother
Church,
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts
Christian Science is the restoration to this age of the religion taught and practiced by Jesus the Christ twenty centuries ago. It is, in its fullest intent and purpose, a return to the simple and spiritual teachings of the Holy Bible from Genesis to Revelation. It teaches that every act and every word of the mighty Jesus was given to the world by way of instruction, of example and of precept — not to show merely that he was the Son of God but to show also, in the language of John, that "Now are we the sons of God" and, as Paul puts it, "joint-heirs with Christ"; that as "children of God" and "joint-heirs with Christ", we, by understanding and following the teachings and practice of Jesus, shall be able to work out for ourselves a full and complete salvation as did he, a salvation not only from sin but from every fettering belief of what St. Paul calls "the carnal mind," in other words, the human or mortal mind — the mind from which emanates all the conditions of sin, sickness, inharmony, unhappiness, poverty, sorrow and finally death, and the grave.
And in this process of working out our salvation from the myriad of inharmonious mortal conditions Christian Science draws clearly the line of distinction made in the Bible between so-called mortal man and "the children of God." This distinction is most clearly brought out in the Bible in the book of Genesis. We find in the first chapter of Genesis a full, complete and finished account of the creation of the universe including "the children of God," and in this account we find the statement that "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him"; and herein we find man pronounced perfect. Now this account of the creation of man and the universe in the first chapter of Genesis is distinct, definite, complete and final, as anyone may see.
Then proceeding to the second chapter of Genesis, a chapter which was unquestionably written hundreds of years after the first chapter, and by an entirely different writer, we find the statement that "there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground," that is, a mystification arose, which, as is clearly shown from that which follows, is the belief in the reality of materiality or matter. And then in this second chapter of Genesis follows the narration of creation embodying the Adam man, or the man of flesh and blood, this conception resulting from the mist, and thus we find a description of the beginning of the untrue or unreal creation, or the creation of mortal man, which is entirely and distinctly opposite to the man of God's creating, or the man created in the image and likeness of God, depicted in the first chapter of Genesis. And right here, with the universal misconception of the import of this second and material account of creation and through the theological misunderstanding and teaching concerning these two distinctly opposite accounts, rests the foundation of all the sin, sickness, misery and unhappiness with which the world is filled today.
Now Jesus said that "God is a Spirit." If that be so and man is made in God's image and likeness then man must be spiritual, and it consequently follows that the fleshly man, the mortal or Adam man, is not of God's creating. The whole mission of the Bible, the entire purpose and import of the life and works of Jesus and the purpose of Christian Science, is to educate mankind into the understanding of what the man of God's creating is, in contradistinction to this mortal so-called man, and to furnish mankind with that degree of spiritual understanding whereby he can, as Paul's epistle to the Colossians puts it, "put off the old man with his deeds" (that is, the carnal or fleshly man) and "put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him." Jesus drew most clearly the line of demarcation between this right and wrong concept of man when, speaking of the fleshly or mortal man, he said, "ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it." And in Romans we find this distinction clearly drawn in the statement "they which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God."
The basic error of all theological teaching, reasoning, argument and deduction, for centuries, has been the accepted conclusion that because the Bible declares that man is made in the image and likeness of God, this man of the flesh is that likeness and that consequently God must be the image and likeness of mortal man. Mary Baker Eddy in her book "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" most aptly states the situation when she says, "Human philosophy has made God manlike. Christian Science makes man Godlike." We have, until the advent of Christian Science, been reasoning from effect to cause in our conclusions about God and man and instead of trying to comprehend man, the true man, as Godlike, we have been endeavoring to hold in our imagination God as the image and likeness of mortal man. Christian Science reverses in toto this method of reasoning and, laying the foundation for its conclusions in Spirit instead of in matter, in the spiritual creation as depicted in the first chapter of Genesis, it teaches, as did Jesus, that the fleshly or mortal man, the Adam man, is the result of the mist or mystification spoken of in the second chapter of Genesis. Christian Science teaches, in other words, that all there is of mortal man and the material universe including its sin, its sickness, and its death is the product of the carnal or mortal mind, the mist, and that the whole process of translation of this mistaken concept of the universe back to the original, spiritual concept is exclusively a mental one.
As St. Paul puts it, "For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But," he concludes, "ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you," that is, if so be that the spiritual understanding of creation as depicted in the first chapter of Genesis is sufficient to bring into subjugation in the minds of mortals that false concept of the material creation depicted in the second chapter of Genesis.
Christian Science bases its teachings on the following fundamental Scriptural postulates:
1st, that God is not a far away, unknown and unknowable person of human propensities and form, but that He is infinite, ever present and omnipotent; that He is, as Mrs. Eddy puts it in Science and Health, "Principle; Mind; Soul; Spirit; Life; Truth; Love."
2nd, that man is not a sick, sinning, suffering, fallen, dying child of God, separated from his Maker, but that man is perfect, co-eternal and co-existent with and, inseparable from God, dwelling eternally with the Father.
3rd, that sin and death are not God-ordained but are illusions of the carnal mind — the result of the mist.
4th, that sickness is not the result of material causation and a condition of matter but that disease of all kinds is the product of the carnal or mortal mind and is wholly a mental condition.
5th, that matter cannot; never has and never will prevent or cure disease.
Mesmerized by the false dogmas of a perverted theology humanity has all too long permitted itself to be led blindly along the brink of despair and atheism until now it seems somewhat ready to at least touch the hem of the garment of a true Christianity founded on the teachings and works of the Master, and with a joy and eagerness and hope born of centuries of weary waiting and fruitless expectancy, like a tired child turns at eventide to a mother's loving arms, it is now turning to an ever present, omnipotent God of love and compassion and is learning through Christian Science that man is not a sick, sinning, suffering, fallen being entirely separated from his Maker and set adrift on an uncharted sea without oar or rudder, like the flotsam and jetsam of the mighty ocean, subject to all the vagaries of a material existence; that he is not, as it were, a human shuttlecock tossed hither and yon by the battledores of chance, change, sin, sickness, poverty, sorrow and death, but that man, is, as the Bible says he is, the image and likeness of God, inseparable from God and subject alone to God and His law — that law which knows no let or hindrance, which is eternally harmonious and which is "the same yesterday, and to day and for ever."
If man is the image and likeness of God then man must be as perfect as God — otherwise he could not be the image of God. And if this be so, man must be eternally as perfect as God, never subject to chance and change. Now anyone can perceive that a sick man, a sinful man, an unhappy, a poverty or fear-stricken man is far from being the image of divine perfection. Christian Science teaches that man made in God's image is spiritually perfect and eternally co-existent with God and is consequently not the victim of material birth, growth, maturity, decreptitude and decay. Only on this basis can the Bible and the teachings and works of Jesus be explained and only on this basis can the teachings and works of Jesus be demonstrated. Unless an interpretation of Scripture is as demonstrable as a rule of mathematics it were as well that that interpretation were left unpenned. And hereon rests the secret of the marvelous achievements and growth of Christian Science — on its ability to demonstrate with scientific certainty its interpretation of Scripture.
Jesus said that all who believe on him shall do the works that he did, otherwise, in the language of Paul, their words are "as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." Preaching without the accompanying practice of healing found a strong rebuke in the words of James when he said "Faith without works is dead." And hear the prophetic words of Jesus uttered in the temple at Jerusalem when, referring to the necessity of works as well as of words, he said "Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: . . . Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof."
The necessity for the healing work as a concomitant of spiritual understanding was clearly perceived and understood by the early Christians and, for some hundreds of years after the time of Jesus — until, in fact, worldliness, sin and sensuality were allowed to enter in and usurp the spiritual significance given to the Scriptures by the words and works of Jesus — the healing of all manner of human inharmonies was considered as essential as the preaching. Those healing works were looked upon as "the signs following" which should characterize all true Christian endeavor. But, with the lapse of time, gross thinking, ambition and lack of spiritual understanding crept in and ruled out those "fruits of the Spirit," and gradually the healing was lost sight of and nothing was left but the preaching. Then what happened?
What was substituted by the ecclesiatics in place of spiritual understanding? Why, creeds and dogmas, pomp, form, ritual and ceremony. That is what was given us in place of spiritual understanding and a scientific interpretation of the Scriptures, and that is what has enthralled and fettered mankind throughout the centuries until the day Christian Science, with its battle cry of freedom, was given to the world some fifty years ago. Why the need of a creed if our understanding of the Scriptures enables us to obey the Master's command to go into all the world and heal the sick and raise the dead? But, you ask, Has not Christian Science a creed? It has not. Each Christian Scientist on uniting with the Christian Science church subscribes to six brief tenets, everyone of which directs thought and effort, not away from the Bible and the words and works of Jesus, but turns thought toward the Bible and establishes this Holy Book from cover to cover as the true guide to eternal life. Let me read to you briefly from these tenets, which may be found in the Christian Science text book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," by Mary Baker Eddy. (See page 497).
You have heard it objected that Christian Science is not common sense, have you not? Now that objection may be a more valid one than some are aware, for, as the term usually pertains, common sense is that sense of things — that sense of human life and its environments — based upon sense testimony or upon the testimony of the five physical senses. Now the mortal concept of the entire material universe, including man, is nothing more nor less than a concept based on the testimony of the five physical senses, and Jesus demonstrated for all mankind throughout all time that man's true senses are spiritual and that therefore any conclusion based on the testimony of the physical senses must be an erroneous one. Furthermore, there is not a single physical law, or so-called law of matter that Jesus did not completely annul and overthrow through his intelligent application of spiritual law, the law of God or divine Mind.
Did Jesus exemplify what is termed common sense in his transformation of the water into wine, his stilling the tempest, his instantaneous transportation of the ship across the sea of Galilee, his appearance through locked doors and rock ribbed walls, his healing all manner of disease by spiritual means alone, his feeding the thousands with seven loaves and a few small fish, his walking upon the waters, his victory over death for himself and others, his unparalleled escape from the tomb after the crucifixion and his final and triumphant exit from the flesh at the moment of his ascension? Most certainly not! And yet he plainly tells us that the works that he did, shall we do also. To be sure, it is a far cry from the present state of human consciousness to which mankind have fallen, through erroneous theological teaching and thinking, to that mental and spiritual height from which Jesus viewed and mastered all materiality with its various phases of so-called law and action, but Christian Science has started at the numeration table of the science which Jesus taught and demonstrated and is gradually and certainly establishing in the consciousness of humanity the understanding of and dependence on that spiritual law which enabled Jesus, the apostles and the early Christians to replace what we call common sense with the more uncommon and exalted spiritual understanding which heals the sick and reclaims the sinner.
St. Paul marks clearly this distinction between common sense and spiritual understanding where he says "If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live." Now the deeds of the body, if one stops to think for a moment, are patently the deeds of the five physical senses, that is seeing, feeling, tasting, smelling and hearing. There is no question about that — no room for argument. And St. Paul here plainly tells us that before a full comprehension of life can be attained the deeds of the body must be mentally mortified by the understanding that all the faculties of man are spiritual and eternal. James tells us that the same spring sendeth not forth both sweet water and bitter, that is, that good and evil do not proceed from the same source — that the five physical senses cannot be God ordained and at the same time channels to mankind for all manner of evil and misfortune. Now God never gave man anything that would cause him to be unhappy, sinful, sick, poverty stricken or inharmonious in any particular, and can you conceive of a single condition of mortal inharmony that does not manifest itself through one or more of the five physical senses? How much of God can you consciously discern or comprehend through the medium of any one of the five physical senses? Not one of these senses is essential to the understanding or apprehension of God and yet they are all channels to mankind for all the misery and unhappiness to which they have been ever subject. It is only through the understanding that the senses of man are wholly and eternally spiritual that health and harmony can be brought out through the medium of the physical senses.
The entire import and purpose of the Master's career were to prove to a burdened, a sick and a sin filled world that sin, sickness, and death are unreal and untrue conditions and that they may not only be overcome through the correct understanding of God and man and their relation to each other, but that it is the duty of each one of us to overcome these conditions exactly as did he. This is not idle conjecture or a speculative conclusion — it is a fact. Jesus made it very plain that mankind must sooner or later meet and master every condition of physical and moral inharmony from a spiritual standpoint. He left no room for argument on that point — no chance for equivocation. You must either accept that necessity or repudiate in toto the Bible and the words and works of Jesus. He indicated plainly that his mission on earth was to show mankind how to work out their own salvation. He did not presume or pretend to do it for them. He taught and proved that mortal, material existence is but a counterfeit existence and that the whole experience of mortal man from the cradle to the grave is but a dream — a condition of the carnal or mortal mind. He taught that as mortal existence is but an erroneous concept of the mortal mind, man's salvation from all the conditions of material existence lies in mental regeneration, in exchanging the thoughts and false conclusions of the mortal mind for the imperishable ideas of the divine Mind, or God.
As we read in Ephesians, "That ye put off . . . the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness."
In other words, Jesus taught that man's entrance into the kingdom of heaven consists simply in putting off the carnal man, the carnal mind, and putting on the true man, the reflection of God, Spirit, divine Mind. And Jesus clearly showed that this process of putting off the old man and of entrance into the kingdom of heaven is not a process involving a change in location or environment accomplished through the experience called death. Jesus taught and proved conclusively that death is not a concomitant of heaven; that death has no part in the journey of mankind from mortality to immortality. He taught that death is an enemy which must be overcome, not submitted to, and that the old theological belief or superstition that by passing through the experience of death we are ushered into the presence of an Almighty Being in a locality called heaven is as purely a myth as the veriest fable of antiquity. Jesus said, "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living" and in First Corinthians it is written "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." Jesus proved this by reappearing after the crucifixion to show humanity that death has no power over one equipped with that spiritual understanding which he came to inculcate in the minds of mortals.
Jesus taught that Heaven is attainable here and now in the degree that we exchange the misconceptions or the mortal or carnal mind for the undying realities of the divine Mind, or God. He said "The kingdom of heaven is at hand" and on one occasion, in answer to the question as to the whereabouts of Heaven, he replied "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." It would hardly require an extended course in theological study and research to conclude from these texts that Heaven is not a locality, would it? Yet that is just exactly what we have been taught for centuries. One of the gravest errors of false theological teaching that has been handed down to mankind is that Heaven is a place and that man attains his heavenly home through the process of death. Each act of goodness, of charity, of love, of forgiveness, of self abnegation — each thought tending to the subjugation of the flesh through spiritual understanding is one step nearer the kingdom, and when mankind shall have arrived at that point of spiritual discernment at which Jesus arrived when, to their own consciousness, the material completely disappears and nothing but spiritual perception has abiding place, then will they have attained to that Heaven into which Jesus was ushered on that beautiful morning after the breakfast with his disciples on the shore of the Galilean Sea.
Christian Science teaches, in other words, that this mortal body is merely the substratum of the mortal or carnal mind and that when we begin to change our mortal minds through the application and substitution of the divine Mind, or God, we begin, in a corresponding degree to change our mortal bodies from bad, sick, deformed, diseased, sinful bodies to better, healthier and more perfect ones. So, when the mortal or carnal mind and body shall have been completely eliminated and displaced through the substitution of the divine Mind, or God, then will man be found in "the image and likeness of God," dwelling in the divine consciousness of life eternal, without beginning and without end and with Heaven his home. To quote again from St. Paul — "So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory."
With a full appreciation of the teachings and accomplishments of Christian Science it is difficult to imagine a more fitting and appropriate name for Mrs. Eddy's discovery than that given it by her, namely "Christian Science." This discovery of Mrs. Eddy's is demonstrating and proving for the first time since the third or fourth century after the time of Jesus that the words and works of the Master are based on a divine, demonstrable, scientific Principle. It is proving to the world that there is a scientific, spiritual fact concerning all things and all phenomena which, when fully understood and rightly applied, will annul every known physical law.
This scientific Principle taught and demonstrated in a degree today by Christian Science is an immutable law of Spirit or divine Mind which always has existed and which always will exist. This law was not invented by Jesus nor was it invented by Mrs. Eddy or Christian Science; it is an eternal ever present law of God which Jesus came to explain and elucidate and prove and through Christian Science this law is being restated, re-established and redemonstrated. Through the proof and demonstration of this ever present, ever available divine law by Christian Science to the overcoming of matter and its so-called laws, Christianity and the teachings and works of Jesus are being established as supremely scientific. A scientific fact or principle, as everyone knows, is unchanging and unalterable. A theory is never scientific until it is proven infallible and not subject to chance and change, and when it is so proven it then ceases to be a theory and becomes a scientific fact, regardless of whether or not all are able to understand, apply and prove it. So, any teaching, theory, or so-called science which is one thing today and another thing tomorrow has no authority or right by which it may take to itself the name of science. The science of mathematics, for example, cannot be changed or improved upon.
By what authority, then, I ask, can any theory advanced for the healing of the sick which is constantly changing its base and modus operandi appropriate to itself the title of science. Take, for example, material methods of treating disease. Have you ever heard of any so-called science that can change its spots as quickly and as often as material methods of healing? For centuries and centuries these methods have been held up to mankind as scientific and perfect the while they have been changing with a rapidity that is little short of astonishing. Over night, as it were, in sheer desperation, one remedy or particular cure which has been heralded to the world as a great triumph for material therapeutics is instantly dropped and unceremoniously sidetracked for some other wonderful discovery that is brought forth and foisted on an innocent and susceptible public as the ne plus ultra of material therapeutic science. What, in reality, is nothing but a change from one remedy to another or from one method of treatment to another method, in an effort to cover up the complete inadequacy of what we, the day before, were told was scientifically perfect, is flaunted before the world as "one more great achievement in the advancement of the science of material medicine." Why, the only advancement in any material so-called science of healing in the last four thousand years is the discovery that it is not scientific, and this discovery has been made only since Christian Science compelled it.
In all the four thousand years of so-called advancement in the so-called science of material therapeutic agencies, with the millions of lives sacrificed annually on the altar of this relic of the dark ages, with the millions upon millions of dollars annually expended in useless, aye more than useless, positively harmful, dangerous and cruel, experimentation, I ask you to name me one scientific, material remedy that will scientifically and positively cure any one known disease — just one. What one material remedy in use today for any one known disease was in use fifty years ago? And what one material remedy, so-called, in use today for the cure of any one disease will be in use fifty years hence? You can answer that — the history of all material methods of healing has already answered it for you.
But, you say, what about this wonderful thing paraded before the world as preventive medicine? What about the claims that have been made in the interest of vaccine, serum, toxine, antitoxin and their like? I only wish I had the time to properly go into this subject with you, but as I have not let me briefly call to your attention some of the conclusions with which we have been favored by recognized and reputable authorities concerning the use of these so-called "preventive medicines."
I quote briefly from an editorial in a Los Angeles (California) newspaper of September 22, 1916. The editorial, in discussing the subject of infantile paralysis, says: "But some of the wise doctors, who have really been trying to discover the truth about this — the latest of excuses for political health autocracy in this country — have noted that this disease usually, if not infallibly, attacks patients recently inoculated with serums supposed to ward off other diseases! We quote from W. Van R. Blighton, M.D., Vice-President of a perfectly good medical society as follows: 'Concerning the cause of this disease, I think my professional brothers will be somewhat startled when I suggest the thought that the present epidemic of infantile paralysis may have been caused by smallpox vaccinations. You smile, but why should the increase become epidemic in New York City and endemic throughout nearly the entire country so soon after the wholesale process of vaccination? * * * It may furnish you food for candid reflection, since we know that tuberculosis has increased three hundred percent; skin diseases two hundred and seventy-six per cent, and cancer six hundred per cent, since the introduction of compulsory vaccination.'"
Now the germ theory, that is, the theory that all disease is the result of disease germs in the body, is as everyone knows, the sole and paramount excuse for the serum, the vaccine and the antitoxin. When, it is considered that the millions upon millions of dollars today invested in serum factories and plants and that the fear of the disease germ, which has been so insistently, so insidiously and so cunningly instilled into the minds of mortals, furnish the only protection and excuse for serum and vaccine enthusiasts, it is hardly to be hoped that any effort to rescue mankind from the more than silly germ superstition will be allowed to go unchallenged. But I should like, for your edification, to read to you extracts from an article by John B. Fraser, M.D., of Toronto, Canada. In this article the doctor explains his experiments with all known disease germs and says as follows: "My own observations covered a period of over three years; many other careful observers have investigated this point, and today there is a mass of evidence that cannot be broken down that the germs are the product and not the cause of disease. Bearing in mind that germs are the product of disease, and thus harmless, the Bio-Chemic Theorists of Toronto carried out the following experiments: In testing typhoid germs forty-five experiments were made in which water, milk, bread, cheese, meat, fish, potatoes, head cheese, butter, porridge, etc., was infected with millions of fresh vigorous Typhoid germs; that food containing the germs was used in the ordinary way: and as the Bio-Chemics expected there was not a single instance of any sign of typhoid. Here we have forty-five facts — not assumptions — to build on." The article then goes on to explain similar experiments with the use of pneumonia germs, diphtheria germs, tuberculosis germs, meningitis germs, etc.
Jesus came preaching a gospel of freedom, a freedom from every conceivable form of bondage, from the bondage of materialism of every name and nature. He preached and practiced obedience to none but God and taught that such obedience would bring freedom to mankind. Through the metaphysics of his ministry, do we find the recipe for the healing of all the ills of mankind be they of self, church or state. And so in their broader and clarified vision gained through an enlarged understanding of the commands of the Master, in the light of a scientific interpretation thereof Christian Scientists foresee the ultimate consummation of the idealism of Jesus' teachings in the full realization by all mankind of the true sense of the brotherhood of man and the parenthood of God. They foresee the ultimate doom of all present forms of unchristianly oppression and slavery finding inception in that innate mortal misconception of man as an individual entity existing alone and apart from God.
Christian Scientists understand and have understood, as has probably no other class of people, the true meaning and import of what has been termed Prussianism. They know that Prussianism is but one name for a certain phase of this carnal or mortal mind which finds its counterpart today in many forms of oppression and tyranny existing in our very midst. Christian Scientists know that that great world struggle just terminated in a treaty of peace is but a part of that constantly growing, universal opposition to all present forms of tyranny and oppression and they see vastly more than a mere struggle for freedom from Prussianism and militarism in the agonies through which the world has just passed. Oppression and tyranny brought to us that awful experience and it were well had Christiandom learned its lesson therefrom, for the time has passed when the awakened consciousness of mankind will sit idly by and uncomplainingly brook the ruthless and ungodly usurpation of human rights and freedom by any man or class of men.
Let no one beguile himself into thinking that this war just terminated has been carried on at the cost of millions of lives of noble human beings merely for the destruction of Prussianism. This has been a war between right and wrong, between Principle and the devil. It has been a war of righteousness against the autocracy of the carnal mind, and Prussianism, or militarism, is but one small phase of the autocracy of this so-called mind. Do you, any of you, know of a modern autocracy more pernicious, more subtle, more far reaching, more oppressive, more dangerous, more Prussianistic than the autocracy that threatens the world today through the enforced usurpation of the sole right to administer to the sick by one material so-called school of therapeutics? And do you think for a moment that this war has not been fought for world freedom from such domination and ruthless tyranny as certainly as from Prussianism? In fact, who will deny that Prussianism is not and has not been for years the life and soul of modern medical autocracy? Who will deny that medical domination is not a part of the great web of intrigue spread over the whole world looking to a complete system of autocracy in every walk of life after the world should have been conquered by Germany?
My friends, he who does not see the far reaching tentacles of Prussianism in the present day effort to gain control through legislative enactment of the sole right to administer to the sick by one material school of healing understands little of the meaning of that great war; and he who foresees not the doom of all such forms of domination as a result of that struggle has many surprises in store for him. On what authority, or by what showing of success I ask does any material school of healing assume to forcibly inflict its particular remedies and methods of treatment? On what authority should a free public school system in a free country be handed over unreservedly to the domination, experimentation and exploitation of one particular school of healing regardless of its failures and inefficiencies? On what particular evidence of success can the people of a free country be subjected forcibly to the administration and injection of vile and putrid vaccines, serums, antitoxins and their like?
My friends, in the light of the never ending and monumental failure of all material remedies to prevent, cure or alleviate disease does not compulsory medication stand out today as a most striking counterpart of Prussianism?
Please do not misunderstand me. I would not minimize the honest and earnest efforts of members of various material healing agencies in behalf of suffering humanity throughout the ages, but the time is not far distant when the people of a free country will no more tolerate an attempt at domination by any one school of healing than it will tolerate an attempt at the union of church and state, and today as probably never before in the world's history is the doom of both forecast.
Since the United States cast its lot on the side of the right in the great struggle for world freedom it has been my duty to travel a great deal from one end of the country to the other — north, south, east, and west. I naturally come in contact with many men in all walks of life and in conversation I find the one outstanding characteristic in the minds of all of them appears to be their pitiful groping and grasping for some ray of light — some faint or vague hope — that will explain to them that terrible catastrophe in the light of what has been taught them as Christianity. They are asking themselves, they are asking their neighbors — the stranger in the street, everyone they meet — "Is there no God in heaven? Is there no balm in Gilead?" They are asking "what has become of the centuries and centuries of teaching and preaching in the name of Jesus the Christ with his 'on earth peace, good will toward men?'" They say "Has Christianity failed?" This is the frame of mind one finds today throughout the world in men, women and children. It is pitiful. It is, nevertheless, natural. But what is the answer?
What becomes of the question of Christianity in the light of recent events? There must be an answer to these questionings, and it must be forthcoming. Humanity has arrived at that point where it is going, hereafter, to demand a reason for the hope that is in us, and the answer, my friends, what is it? It is No! Christianity has not failed! Christianity has never failed and never will fail! Had the world been taught the true Christ and had it been practicing the pure science of Christianity given to it by the humble Nazarene it never would have witnessed that ghastly Armageddon. No, Christianity has not failed, but that which has been substituted by man through creed and dogma and ritual for the seamless garment of the true Christ — that which has been substituted by man through preaching in place of practice, through a plethora of words and a paucity of deeds, in place of simple Christian healing — that is what has failed, and it has failed miserably, my friends, miserably.
Mary Baker Eddy discovered the divine laws of Life in the year 1866 and gave to her discovery the name of Christian Science — Christian, because it is preeminently a repetition of the teachings of the great master Christian; because it is loving, compassionate, Christ-like and universal in its adaptations and bestowals; because, through a correct application of its teachings, the works of Jesus of Nazareth may be emulated, and his command to go into all the world and preach the gospel and heal the sick, complied with; Science, because through the correct application of law, as laid down in its teachings, positive and predetermined results will follow as necessarily and certainly as daylight follows the night. A religion to accomplish the works of the Master must be scientific. A religion to be scientific must be Christian.
Mrs. Eddy has incorporated the fundamental teachings of Christian Science in her book "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." This is the text book of the Christian Science denomination. Through its study the secrets and obscurities of Holy Writ have been made plain and instead of a book of mystery the Bible has come to be the chart of life to thousands upon thousands to whom it has heretofore been closed.
I would not have any of you gain the impression that Christian Scientists claim to have completely encompassed the possibilities of spiritual demonstration made available by the discovery of Christian Science — far from it. But what has been accomplished by them through their study of the Scripture, in the light of this discovery, most assuredly proclaims it in truth the restoration of the teachings of primitive Christianity. Through Christian Science the sick are being healed, sinners are being reclaimed, misery and poverty are being reduced and in their places are being planted the seeds of health, happiness, purity, hope and plenty. Its beneficent effects upon the lives of its adherents are reflected in the multitude of its church organizations springing up in every quarter of the globe, each a testimony to its holy and healing influence.
[1919-1920. The exact title of this lecture is not known.]