Edward A. Kimball
Member of the Board of Lectureship of The Mother
Church,
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts
In the course of his introduction the chairman, Mr. Phillip Martineau, said: "People have asked me how it was that, being a lawyer, I could possibly believe in Christian Science."
I am somewhat amused to know that anyone in England thinks it surprising that a lawyer should believe in God; that it should be deemed a matter of comment that a lawyer should believe that God is good; that a lawyer should have fixed his convictions upon the fact that our dear God has done all things well for man, and that He created man that he might have his being. I am amused that anyone should be surprised to find a lawyer who believes in the divine Christ, who believes that through Christ humanity is to be saved from all that torments it, all that infests its life. Why should it be thought incredible that a lawyer should believe in that which promises betterment for the race; which promises a better life and more of it; which promises the redemption of the race? Indeed, on the contrary, I am inclined to think myself that a lawyer, by education, by processes of thought, by reason of his ability to analyze, and to grasp, and to sit in judicial judgment, is pre-eminently qualified to understand Christian Science, and to know that it means for humanity every conceivable form of blessing, and to know that it means it all in the name of our God, as manifested by and through our Christ in a practical, lovable, and natural way.
All of you know that it is customary on the part of our theological schools to require a long time and much elaboration of explanation and study, in order to acquaint the students with the subject of theology. It is admitted that all this is requisite, and in line with this I admit to you my utter inability to traverse the vast subject of Christian Science in one hour, and I am going to rely upon your good judgment to relieve me from any expectation on your part that I ought to tell you everything that can be told about this vast subject.
I can speak only in a fragmentary way concerning one or two phases of it, and on inquiring of our people as to what I could perhaps best speak to you about, the answer was this: "For some strange reason, people are being told that we do not believe in the divinity of Christ, and we would like to have you make it plain to them that we do."
No theme could more easily engage my attention and my effort. It certainly is most appropriate and proper that a Christian denomination, coming to declare a new sect, as it were, should make itself very clearly understood on this most important matter. And although it may seem to be an old story to you, I am confident that by the time I have finished telling you something of what we believe about the divinity of Christ, you will feel that something has happened to you that will be of everlasting advantage to everyone in this room; because Christian Science emphasizes the mission, ministry, purpose, and the work of Christianity, of Christ, far beyond the ordinary understanding thereof, and brings vastly more of comfort, while increasing the favorable expectation of men.
What is Christ Jesus? All that we know about it historically is what we find in the Bible; but taking the text as it is, we learn that Christ was the Son of God. What is God? In order to know what Christ is, we must know what God is; and surely it is with deep humility that I remind you that it means a great deal for a finite man to undertake to define infinity; and we come with uncovered heads into this presence, and with deep modesty undertake to declare what God is.
Men have quarrelled over the question and quarrelled over the answer for ages, but most of you have a belief about God that I shall not disturb; and in speaking with you, we can almost speak as if we were in accord because we all believe that God is one God; that God is Spirit or spiritual; that God is self-existent; that He is an individual, conscious, intelligent being.
We all believe that God is the basis and foundation, the source, cause, origin, and Principle of all that really exists; we all of us believe that God is Life, Truth, and Love; we all believe that God is omniscient, and we mean by it that God is all knowledge, that God includes all truth, all wisdom. We all of us believe that that all-inclusive wisdom is quite appropriately described when, among other things, we declare God to be the infinite, divine, all-inclusive Mind of the universe. We all believe that God is the only law-maker of the universe; and we ought to believe that no other law is valid; none has power to control us, other than the divine law.
We all of us declare that God is good, and we mean by that, that God is the infinity of good; and we ought to believe that because God is the infinity of good, He includes no evil, does not coöperate with it, does not use it for any purpose whatever; and specifically we ought to know that for this reason God has not procured nor instituted disease for any purpose.
We understand that this God is the creator of life and life only. Now the Mind, the intelligence, the infinite wisdom that is God and that created all things, created Christ Jesus, His off-spring, the divine manifestation of God to man. In considering Christ, Christian Science teaches that the reality of Christ, the immortality, the divinity, the sonship, is not in the mere bodily presence, not in the corporeal presence of Jesus that was born of Mary; but the divinity of Christ is in the Mind which was in Christ. Christian Science teaches that it was the Mind that is God which also was in Christ Jesus. Therein is the divinity of Christ, therein the immortality of this divine Godlike son of God. It was the Mind that is divine which was in Christ that constituted his Messiahship, that makes him the Saviour. It was this Mind that is the voice of God to man. It is this that shows forth the power of God. It was this Mind that came to do the will of God and to fulfil the divine law. It was this Mind that came to seek and to save that which was lost; that came to destroy the works of the devil. It was this Mind that overcame. It was this Mind that healed the sick, reformed the sinner, raised the dead, removed mountains, walked upon the waves, raised Jesus from the dead and overcame every form of evil that opposes itself to the welfare and heaven of man.
It was this Christ that demonstrated, for the benefit of a suffering and an apparently doomed humanity, the divine nature, the divine purpose, the divine willingness, the divine law and power, and showed to man that this power was not a far off obscured thing, but that it was a thing ever present, a thing for you and me now and everywhere. Christ Jesus came to demonstrate and to enforce not the law of death, but the law of Life. At this point we come into contact, as it were, with very many of the prevalent beliefs, one of which is that Jesus Christ did this by way of mystery, that it was done by miraculous or supernatural interposition; and at this point Christian Science asks you to consider this one thing. I don't believe I have said anything yet about Christ but what any one in England can afford to believe. Christian Science teaches that Christ Jesus came upon the most consummate errand of all time and history; that he came under the impulsion of perfect and infinite wisdom; he came for one grand endeavor, which was to save that which was lost, to redeem the race, to lift it out of the mire of agony and sin and damnation. Now, Christian Science insists that he knew exactly what he was doing; that he knew more about God and man and the universe than all the rest of the people in the world combined; that he had actual, definite, exact, and provable knowledge; that what he did was done in the wisest possible way, in the natural and lawful way; that he did it in a scientific way and the only right way, according to law, Science, and the divine plan which is never capricious, spasmodic, intermittent, or irregular.
On earth we have tremendous respect for what we call constitutional law. Why? Because the constitutional lawyer examines every act of parliament, and every act of the municipality, and if he finds it is not parallel or consistent with the fundamental constitution of the nation, he asks for its annulment. Why? Because the lawyer demands consistency. He demands a sensible parallelism with a sensible basis.
And so Christ Jesus, as the fulfilment of the law, fulfils it legally and naturally. He was no freak. There was no spasmodic interference with law. He did not overturn or act in contravention of law. What he did was in proof of the fact that it can be done. What did he do? He found some sinners and he found some sick people. Christ Jesus, when he came to save the race, found what he was looking for — and then he proceeded to do the will of God. He reformed the sinners. He also healed the multitude of all manner of diseases. Did he do this in the right way? Is there a better way than his way? Surely, it was pre-eminently successful. He never made a failure.
He healed the sick spontaneously without a failure, a perfect manifestation and the only one on earth of absolute scientific healing. Was it the right way? Did he do it according to law? If so, what law? Was it God's law, or was it contrary to it? If it was the divine law, was it law that changes or not? Does the law of infinite God change? If it was an act or law that never changes, is it not the law now if it was right two thousand years ago? If Christ Jesus came to save the world, to heal the sick man according to divine law, then is it not right that the same man should be healed according to the same law now, or has God changed His changeless nature? Impossible!
So then we broaden out the sense of the Christian mission to declare that Jesus came to show forth the universality of the law of God and its applicability to the man that is sick. If Christ Jesus healed the multitude, what did he have to do in order to accomplish it? I know that at this point, having declared that God does not send sickness, I encounter more or less of a demurrer. I have heard men say: "Why, Mr. Kimball, my answer to your statement that God does not send sickness is this: I believe that God could not govern His disobedient children if He did not send sickness to them. That is what it is for."
I have been told that all the Christian Scientists have been sent out from here so as to make room for the rest of you, and I understand that I am talking to an audience made up of people who are not Christian Scientists. I am going to ask you to be really good-natured because I am going to make an analysis of this proposition and for your own good I ask you to look at it, but you need not believe a thing I say. After you go away from here you may say: "I am intact; the man never touched me; I don't believe a thing he said." But in the meantime just listen to what I am going to say, because it is just as logical as the sun is. Let us admit for one moment that God cannot govern His rebellious and wicked children unless he imposes sickness upon them; and that He sends it for that purpose. I know it is not true, but we will take the proposition as a basis and see where we land. Now if God sends all the sickness to people because they won't behave, then we will say that among other things he sends them tumors, and cancers, and smallpox, and Bright's disease, consumption, and so on.
Take for example smallpox. Suppose that God sends me the smallpox because I won't behave; now comes the question, incidentally, where does God get the smallpox? He either creates it or else there is another creator who has created it who coöperates with God. At all events if God sends the smallpox to me it is a good thing for me to get the smallpox and to keep it. Moreover, it would be a sin under such conditions for me to try and get well.
Why, my dear friends, that one proposition that God sends sickness impeaches the entire medical profession. It carries with it the proposition that God sends sickness to men to make them behave and that the medical profession is trying to offset or upset the divine purpose. What do you think of it? Why, it is intolerable, absolutely intolerable, and so are many of those other beliefs if you only carry them to the end.
Christ Jesus did not abolish anything that God has done. On the contrary, the Bible says that through sin death came into the world — not through God; and this we construe to mean that through ignorance and superstition and vice, sin and fear, mankind has involved itself in prodigious disaster and mortality. So that when Christ healed the sick man he healed him of something that has no right whatever to torment man. This takes me to the consideration of the Christian Science view of disease in order that we may see just what Christ Jesus did and what it means for us.
The world of philosophy has puzzled over the so-called mystery of evil, but having given up the problem, philosophy has decided that all these things exist because they have a right to exist; that there is some form or kind of thing called evil that has a right to pursue and make you sick and kill you at its will, and to declare that you have no right and no adequate power whereby to resist or overcome. And so we have been educated to be reconciled to our own undoing, reconciled to our tragedy and to our pain and to the blight of disease. Now comes Christian Science and declares that all disease is illegitimate, that it belongs to the realm of abnormity — a mere monstrosity which has thrown its weight on the human race; we regard it as being altogether wrong, altogether unnatural, unnecessary, unlawful, ungodly, and unrighteous. So then what Christ Jesus did was to overcome that which has no right to be in the way.
The crusade of Christian Science against disease is based on the ascertained fact that disease is an abnormity, a disorder that can be abolished. Many physicians are coming to make the same sort of admissions. One told me not long ago that he was convinced that had humanity never departed from the normal there never would have been any disease at all. He said he was satisfied that all the conditions and the so-called law and enactments were themselves abnormal.
Christian Science teaches that Jesus knew this. He knew that disease was illegitimate. He said to the man: "Go and sin no more." He said: "Satan hath bound the woman." He did not say God hath bound her. He did not say that God had sent this disease upon her and caused this trouble to the poor woman. I do not know that you believe it, but I find we have to resist constantly this common and desolating opinion that God sends disease and is the author of our woe.
I am reminded on this point of a story I read in America some time ago. I was traveling in a railway train and picked up a local paper which contained the account of the death of a woman. In America we have an article of household use called a folding bed. I understand that you do not have them here. It is a bed that is made so that when out of use it may be folded up and placed against the wall to look like a wardrobe or something like that. Well, the woman, sleeping in one of those beds, was killed, because the bed, which had a spring in it, closed up and broke her neck. She was an estimable woman and, three or four days after the accident happened, her friends and relatives got together and held a memorial service, when they passed this resolution: "Whereas God in His inscrutable wisdom has taken our beloved sister from our midst, be it resolved that we bow in reconciled submission to the divine will."
You may have heard of resolutions like that, but I don't think you ever heard of such a sequel as the one that followed. The paper went on to declare that, notwithstanding all this sentimental reference to resignation, the relatives of the woman, three days afterwards, went into a court of law and began an action for damages against the manufacturer of the folding bed, alleging he was the means of our beloved sister's being taken away from our midst. They were not reconciled at all. They wanted $1,000.00 damages. It seems laughable, but really it is almost tragic when you come to think of the facility with which the charge is put upon our dear Lord, namely, the authorship of disease and everything that crushes the life out of a man or woman.
Christ Jesus did not come to overcome disease that was sent by God; he came to prove that disease was a destructible outrage, and when he healed all manner of diseases he upset the theory that disease is scientifically incurable; and after he had done it all he tried to make mankind see that it was not a mystery, but a God ordained provision and propulsion. He said "I have overcome the world. Go thou and do likewise. These things shall ye do. Preach the Gospel, heal the sick, raise the dead."
Do you suppose he would have told us to do it if it were not a part of a legitimate modus operandi of Christian salvation? No. Concerning the fulness of this same salvation what did the divine Christ do for the deliverance of mankind? We have been educated to believe that salvation through Christ is for the benefit of the sinner, the man who has been wicked and who needs the cancellation of his penalty, and this is true so far as it goes.
Let me make a picture to you. Go to some really good woman, one who has been righteous, honest, high-minded, self-sacrificing — one who has been loving and charitable, who has been doing all her life long deeds of kindness, of charity, and of righteousness. Go to that woman and talk to her of Christ, and she may ask what Christ means. "Why, Christ means the salvation of that bad man over there that has been so wicked all his life; he has been saved through Christ; he is perfectly happy; he is joyous — glorified today; he has been an awfully bad and wicked man, has raised havoc and tumult throughout life; but now Christ has saved him."
Then she might well ask: "Is there no salvation through Christ for a good woman who is in trouble? This man who was suffering the torment of wickedness, you say he has been saved and is happy; is there no salvation through Christ for a good woman who is sick and in agony of pain, perhaps because she has overworked herself in behalf of other people?" What is the answer? The answer is: "No, poor, dear woman. There is nothing for you but to cry on; nothing for you but increasing pain; nothing but the intensity of gloom because salvation through Christ is not for a sick woman; it is for a man or woman that is wicked."
Christian Science comes to declare not only as a merely religious fact, but as a purely scientific fact, just as scientific as your calendar, that all evil is one evil. It all exists in a net-work of cause and effect, and because Christ is equal to the salvation of a man from any of it he is equal to the salvation of a man from all of it.
Christian Science teaches that salvation through Christ is salvation from sickness, and from poverty, and from every other miserable outrageous thing that holds us in the mire of an unhappy life, and holds over us the prospect of an unhappy future. Christ, the Saviour of the world from what? "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." Free from what? Go and observe the various ways in which we are tormented. I undertake to declare that everyone of us is a victim to-day; that everyone has been imposed upon and defrauded by a false sense of life, a false philosophy, a falsely arranged society. We are abnormal; we call ourselves a fallen race, but we are being put upon and set upon and we are entitled to get out of trouble.
I remember when I was dying in a sanitarium, a man came to me and said: "Kimball, do you believe in hell?" I was suffering the torments of the damned and I said: "Of course, I believe in hell. Why, man, I am in hell." And I was. Now I am an expert on hell. I know all about it. And I know that in order to find all the hell that anybody wants, it is only necessary to find the continuance of mental and bodily anguish. There is enough hell there for a whole race. But I found that hell was not immortal, because I got out.
Christ Jesus was the most amiable person or man that ever lived, the very incarnation of love, and yet he was the most pronounced radical or revolutionist of all time. He overturned and tore down the idols of society, and Christian Science is likewise tearing down some of the idols that bring advantage and happiness to nobody. I never looked up the definition of the word "idol" in the dictionary. I believe I shall have to define it for myself. I mean by idol that which a man is afraid of, that which he is subservient to, yields to and obeys, that which he loves, that which governs him, and so on. And there are many idols which we worship that crush life and happiness out of us. Now one of the idols of this race that Christian Science is going to tear down is the idol of belief in the incurable nature of disease. Christian Science comes unequivocally to declare that all disease can be eradicated, and will, and must be, and that scientifically, fundamentally, there is no real thing such as an incurable disease, and that anybody in supposing that disease is incurable has no warrant therefor except the well known fact that medicine won't cure it; that is all. And at last the people who die at the rate of fifty million a year in spite of medicine are invited to ask themselves whether there may not be something else that will cure them. There is evidence before every Christian that there is something, and the question is whether the something is available to the sick people or not.
I know what it is to feel the sting of the sentence, "You have an incurable disease;" I know all about the gloom; I know what it means to be absolutely shattered by the declaration. I know what it means to go and watch oneself die alongside an open grave, and I know, moreover, what it means to be dragged from that grave and restored to a life of usefulness and happiness. If there were no other case of healing, if there were not a million other cases like mine, mine alone would be pretext for the hope of millions, because I was healed in Christian Science after physicians in America and England had utterly failed and pronounced me absolutely incurable.
For twenty-one years I have represented the difference between life and death; for all these years I have stood in attestation of the proposition that disease is curable. Moreover, I have stood in attestation of the fact that the same power that will cure a man will strengthen him, give him dominion and capacity. When I arrived in England I was told that I was a pronounced specimen of the thoroughly broken-down and shattered American business man; that was the sentence, with fatal expectation of a speedy death; instead thereof I have been without a serious instance of sickness for twenty-one years.
Moreover, in order specifically to let you know what it means, I will say that eleven years ago I began this work of lecturing in America. It is customary for me to speak five times a week. I have travelled in the ten or eleven years 350,000 or 400,000 miles to do it. I have made from 1,500 to 1,800 engagements, just the same as I made this engagement. More than three months ago I was engaged to speak in Manchester tonight at half-past seven o'clock. I have made 1,800 such engagements scattered all over a vast territory and a vast time, and the thoroughly broken-down, shattered, and incurable business wreck has never missed one time. I do not say these things boastingly, to attract attention to any Christian Scientists, but, my dear Christian friends, I say it to attract attention to the teaching of our Christ, to the work that he did, and that is what I am trying to accentuate. Nobody made any more absurd use of the English language than the man makes when he challenges our belief in the divinity of Christ. I don't think anybody on earth ever believed more about it. None ever expected more through Christ and none ever got more through Christ than we do.
Christian Science teaches that the great torment and pest of life is fear. It causes sin, poverty, disease, and everything else, and yet it is a disorder that is abnormal. It can be destroyed and whatever can destroy it will practically save this race. Of all men who are difficult to heal by the metaphysicians, the most difficult, other things being equal, is the man who believes that God is making him sick. That fear of God is the most mischievous that animates or destroys humanity. It is a fundamental, tragic mistake, and Christian Science will break down the idol, break down the murderer, because the fear of God, the alarm, the consternation concerning God, absolutely wounds our people unspeakably. The man who is next most difficult to heal is the man that is afraid of the devil and hell. You may say: "Well, it is strange that anyone should be afraid of the devil; I am not afraid." I hope you are not. I was. I was brought up under the instruction of an austere theology which induced me to believe that the devil was fully as important a pillar as God, and which induced me to believe that an eternal hell was in the companionship of our eternal God, and that men were for a finite sin to endure an infinity of punishment and agony.
I know in speaking of the destruction of this idol that I touch upon more or less sensitive ground, but don't be afraid until I get all through. I remember that a lady in Chicago came to a practitioner and told him she had the asthma. She said, "I think I would like to be treated, but before you treat me I want to ask you some questions. First of all, I want to know if you believe in a personal God." "Well," the answer was, "we do vastly more and better than that. The ordinary human conception of a personal God is very limited, finite, and minimized. We have to get above the narrow restrictions of persons or corporeality in order to finally understand God, but if you mean, do we believe that God is individual, that he is spiritually personal, yes we do." "Well," the woman said, "there is one more question: Do you believe in a personal devil?" The reply was: "No, we don't." "There, that's it! They told me there was something wrong about Christian Science, and that's it." And so she went away and she kept her personal devil and her asthma, too. They both go together. Jesus said, "Satan hath bound the woman." They talk about Christian Science as being transcendental. That is to say, that it is above the level of the senses, and then they repudiate our repudiation of the devil.
Now let us examine the devil according to the senses. What evidence is there that there is any devil at all? Can anybody see him? Hear him? No. Smell of him? No. Taste of him? No. Feel of the devil? No. Well, you have exhausted the senses, without a particle of evidence. Now the only secondary evidence there is is that one might say the sin of the world is evidence of the devil. Well, what is the sin of the world? Do you not know that everybody on earth might stop sinning at twelve o'clock to-night and never sin again? Yes. Well, if everyone did it what would become of sin? It would become extinct, would it not? What would become of the devil? The devil would become extinct also. And what Christ did was to overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil, and all that can be construed or described as the devil has got to go down to be abolished and exterminated because there is no immortality but God, and God will destroy every other pretense of power or law or control of man.
Now about hell. Hell is the punishment which sin, error, and ignorance bestow upon their victim. Consider the case of a man who drinks whiskey. Naturally it makes him sick and imposes upon him the delirium tremens. He tells you in horror that there are snakes in his boots and all sorts of dreadful things about him. The man is in hell, is he not? What puts him in hell? Whiskey. Whiskey condemns him, punishes him, and keeps him in hell. If you want to get him out, what do you do? You tell him to stop the whiskey drinking. That is his murderer, his exterminator, his judge. That is what is wounding him and you know that if he will stop the cause he will stop the effect likewise. There is no such thing as the immortality of evil, because according to its own rule and law it will end. Now it is useless to try to get people into heaven by scaring them about hell, for the simple reason that a scared man can't get into heaven. None ever was scared into heaven. You might ask: "How do you Christian Scientists expect to get to heaven if you are not scared in?" Because we are not at all afraid of hell — not at all. We believe that the way to heaven is the way of honesty, the way of virtue, the way of uprightness and loving compassion and tenderness, of forgiveness, of right living, of right thinking; and we know that when heaven is achieved it will be within us and that we are not to reach it because of the door of the grave nor of the door of hell.
I once read a story about a woman who went to heaven and inquired of St. Peter if she might come in. "Well," he said, "I will look it over and see whether you are entitled to come in or not." In a few minutes he came back and said: "You may come in, and if you will wait here briefly I will show you your home in heaven." She waited until he came and then they walked down the path of heaven until they came to a beautiful little cottage all covered over with flowers. And she smiled and said, "Oh, this is my home."
"Why, no, this is not yours."
"To whom does this belong?"
"It belongs to the man who used to be gardener for you on earth."
Well, she thought that was very nice for him; and they went on. Then they came to a larger house, beautifully painted, ornamented. And she said: "Oh, I see; this is mine. That was right for the gardener; but this is mine."
"No, this is not yours."
"To whom does this belong?"
"Why, this belongs to the little, old widow lady that used to live round the corner from you; and she had a lot of children and she used to take in washing to support them. Do you remember?"
"Yes."
Then they went on and on and heaven began to look plainer and less attractive, until finally they came to a house very plain and uninviting, and then St. Peter stopped and said, "Now, madam, this is your home."
"What, this? No, no — impossible. Why, think of my life, of what I have been on earth. Oh, no, it can't be!" And she continued until finally the tumult ceased and St. Peter said to her: "Madam, you cannot possibly regret so much as we in heaven do that you have no more beautiful home here. But, madam, we did the best we could for you with the materials you furnished us."
What are the materials of heaven for you and me? Not alarm, not a scare about devil or hell, but the purification, the regeneration of thought, the Christianization of manhood and womanhood. That is the substance of heaven and there is none beside. And let me tell you that with loving entreaty, with abundance of practical promise, does Christian Science teach everyone of its adherents to love one another, to be just and upright and honest, and to do unto others as we would be done by.
The way of salvation is the way that is in obedience to the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. The way that is like Christ and without reproach before God and man. Alas, for us! We have suffered for the evils of a misconceived life and we have to find our way out. But meantime while you are winning your way you need not be afraid of an immortal hell, because God is the only possible immortality. Evil must end, and it will. What think ye of the divinity of Christ? Do we expect too much? Is there too much of salvation in it? Is the poor man that feels the sting of agony promised too much of heaven by Christian Science? Is it too much to promise him that the kingdom of heaven is at hand; or must we coax him to die in order to find it? Did Christ Jesus ever invite anybody to die in order to go to heaven? Never. He said the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of Life is within you. Christ Jesus demonstrated absolute healing. How did he do it? He did not use drugs at all. He healed diseases that drugs have never healed. His whole work was an impeachment of the drug theory.
What was it that he exerted when he healed the sick? The Bible says that God is the healer of our diseases; and that means, necessarily, that that which is God, the substance, power, law, and plan of God, includes the healing of disease. Christian Science insists upon it that God is the only thing that is equal to the abolition of disease, that Christ is the only way, and that Christ exhibited the only power to do it.
What power did Christ Jesus show forth? The power that created the universe, that created man, that was powerful enough to do it, is the sustaining power of the universe. Not only does it exist necessarily, but it is available to the man that is sick. That is what the Christian Scientist is testing now; namely, there is a power practically available, scientifically exerted, that is equal to the extinction of disease. That is what Christian Science is advocating to-day. That is what it is practically proving.
Now all this is because of an interpretation of Christianity as given by Mrs. Eddy; and when I speak of her I do it with tender gratitude, because in consequence of her discovery and her faithful proof and her continued efforts for mankind I am alive instead of being dead. Like every other reformer, every other discoverer of that which is of spiritual benefit to mankind, she has been maligned and misrepresented, but meantime she toils on — unconcerned, concerning those who choose to lie about and misrepresent her, intent only upon the deliverance of this race, intent upon making it known to men that in our own dear Christianity we have the possibility of complete and ample salvation now and here.
Briefly, however, have I touched upon the subject. If it were feasible I might talk to you for weeks and never finish the story of that which is by way of promise greater than anything that has touched the ears of mankind. If you are sick be not despairing. There is hope for you. Other people are being rescued from the hell of disease and agony. The law is universal. It is for you, and some day you will learn it; some day you will be delivered; some day you will be more happy and prosperous and more competent.
[Delivered at Midland Hall, Manchester, England, May 19, 1908. This is the sixteenth of 18 lectures featured in the book Lectures and Articles on Christian Science by Edward A. Kimball.]