Article March 23, 1899 Issue

The Claims of Christian Science on People of Liberal Thought

The subject for our calm consideration is "The Claims of Christian Science on People of Liberal Thought." People of liberal thought I understand to be people who think for themselves. People of liberal thought are people of liberated thought. Such persons wear no labels. They are to be found among Jew and Gentile, bond and free. There are people of liberal thought in Russia. There ought to be many in this land of the free press, the free ballot and the free school. People of liberal thought are open-eyed, open-eared, teachable, humble, ever-learning, ever-searching, confessing in speech and in manner that all they know is but as a grain of sand on the shore of a boundless sea. So when the Nazarine prophet was asked who made up the population of the Kingdom of Heaven and was the greatest among its citizens, he answered in substance, People of liberal thought, for he took a little child and placed him in the midst of them and said, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." It is a recognized fact that the people liberalized by our free institutions consider that they have a right to the whole of Truth. With them it is simply a question of whether a thing is worth the having. Convinced of this, no prejudices of antiquity, no false claims of social prestige, no counterfeit badges of pharisaic exclusiveness can rob the thinking American of this just rights. If Christian Science is worth the having, liberal Americans will have it, and illiberal denunciation and blind opposition will not stay its onward march.

I was so slow myself in coming into Christian Science that I understand some of the difficulties which stand in the way of its instant appreciation by people of liberal thought. As I recall my own experience, I found a difficulty in getting at the full meaning, on the first reading, of the Christian Science text-book, "SCIENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES," by Mary Baker G. Eddy. There appeared to be an unfamiliar use of familiar words. I was helped somewhat by remembering a similar experience with the study of Herbert Spencer and Emmanuel Kent. It is only fair in reading a new author to suspend judgment until you are able to approach the subject from his view point. Once in sympathy with your author many supposed differences fade away. I was also helped by discovering, on consulting the best lexicons, that the author of SCIENCE AND HEALTH used words, not in their corrupted sense, but in their original and primary meaning. Honest study will show that no modern author is more precise than is Mrs. Eddy in her choice of the right word to convey her exact meaning.

Another seeming difficulty which, for a time hid from me the claims of Christian Science on people of liberal thought, was the frequent occurrence in SCIENCE AND HEALTH of statements that were opposed to all that heretofore I had supposed to be true. I was helped over this difficulty by remembering the experience of Galileo, of Copernicus, of Columbus, and of every great reformer by whom the world has been blessed. They made statements that were opposed to all that had here to fore been supposed to be true, and as it turned out, this was their value — that did revolutionize all existing systems. As I beheld humanity's sickness and suffering, its sorrow and its sin, as I remembered our overflowing hospitals and asylums, our crowded jails and reformatories, within our nineteenth century civilization, I said, "It may be that the one thing lacking is a new school of thought which shall revolutionize present conditions through a revolutionary system." Now after a careful study and a clear understanding of this system, I see that a strong claim of Christian Science on people of liberal thought is that it proposes to effect a needed revolution through doctrines that are revolutionary.

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