["A Brother Minister," in the Worcester (Mass.) Telegram.]

Since your report of Dr. Crane's sermon which "raked Christian Science fore and aft" as a "gigantic humbug," many of us have been waiting for a reply from a Christian Scientis. Our sense of fair play demands both sides of the question. Perhaps they thought that such unargumentative severity would not injure them, perhaps that any adequate reply would require a similar spirit, and this their religion would not sanction. As no response has appeared, will you permit a few observations from one who writes, not as a Christian Scientist, but as a brother minister.

Dr. Crane lays down the proposition that Christian Science is a "form of insanity." To prove this, epithets seem to overbalance the argument. A few specimens are "epidemic hysteria," "beatific selfishness," "moral stupor," "mental alienation," "miserable balderdash," "gigantic humbug." Then, speaking from a Christian pulpit, he calls attention to their "amazing antics," and says, "A sense of humor is the best safeguard of sanity." There are many other epithets, but we forbear,—let them sink into "innocuous desuetude." To call names and make faces is not argument. O'Hara says, "When the judgment is weak, then prejudice is strong." The weakest way to state a case is to overstate it.

If this spirit voices a sentiment in the churches, those who do not share it have the right to protest. Bitter attack from the pulpit or church against a new faith is not evidence, but presumption. The despised and "dangerous heretics" of yesterday are often the aureoled saints of to-morrow. Every new truth in the world's history has been assailed by the dominant religious powers whose crusted forms it has disturbed. The Founder of Christianity was said to be "beside himself;" his good works were but "by Beelzebub, the prince of devils"—even worse than the critic's suggestion of the good in Christian Science, "good in the same way that opium and coal-tar preparations are good."

Jesus was crucified, and his disciples were slain, save one, who was banished. The Emperor Diocletian began a state paper with these words, "Having extinguished the Christian religion." John Wesley was spurned by the Church and rotten-egged by the mob. The Independents (Congregationalists) were driven out of England. Roger Williams (Baptist) found shelter across the snows in Rhode Island. So the painful story of the persecution of every new truth goes on, and in proportion to its vitality has been the bitterness of attack.

Dr. Crane says, "If there be a devil, Christian Science is his last and most perfect handiwork;" but prince of darkness is not so easily switched off from the old path. He prefers, as ever, a historic movement and the dominant Pharisaism as a field of operation.

What is the reason given for this charge of lunacy? They are "unbalanced" because the reality of matter and the external world is denied. "They bask in the idiotic assurance that the great open sore in the slums does not exist." They thus "violate common sense," often common ignorance. So did Columbus, when his contemporarie asked. "How would people look on the other side of the globe, with their heads hanging down?" So did Copernicus, when they said, "Poor fool, he thinks he can destroy the sacred doctrine of astronomy."

What concern there is for the slums in this criticism! Yet they have grown up in this country with the Church. What has it done for them? Moved out, and when they have come too near, moved again, uptown. Christian Science certainly cannot prove a greater failure with the slums. The thought comes to us that if Constantine had not laid his hand on the Church and said, "You are mine," making it a political machine; if the Church had retained the apostolic spirit and function of healing; if, indeed, it had been to this day obedient to the Master's command to preach the gospel to all nations, to heal the sick, and to cast out evil, might it not have a purchase, through its healing, to lift those in the slums out of gross sense and sin.

The Church has believed too much in the reality and power of materialism and too little in the supremacy of Spirit. Is there a supreme power, "in whom we live and move and have our being"? Is that power available for a sick man? Christian Science says yes, and appeals to the New Testament and the demonstration of the truth in the healing of the sick and the casting out of evil, which are inseparable.

Dr. Crane says this claim is "untested by any scientific sifting." What has scientific materialism to do with a question involving the supremacy of Spirit? There was a testing of the blind man, restored by Jesus, as given in the 9th chapter of John. All the man could say before this mass of material prejudice was, "Whereas I was blind, now I see." Christianity was judged a failure by the test of its time. The claim is "based on falsehood," says the critic; "that matter is unreal, is lunacy." Then many of the greatest minds of the ages have been similarly afflicted. Plato made the "idea" back of all, the reality; matter, the passing shadow. Let me give a few quotations from great thinkers:—

Leibnitz—"Spirit is the sole reality, and spirit is activity." Kant—"This world's life is only a sensuous image of the pure spiritual life, having no reality in itself." Grant Allen speaks of the "profounder fact that the universe, as known to us, consists wholly of mind, and that matter is a doubtful and uncertain inference of the human intelligence." Huxley asks, "After all, what do we know of this terrible matter, except as the name for the unknown hypothetical cause of states of our own consciousness?" and Professor Bowne of Boston University, one of the ablest living philosophers, says in his "Metaphysics," "On whatever line we approach the subject, we find thought able to save itself from contradiction and collapse, only as reality is taken up into mind." "In the fullest sense of the word, only the infinite exists, all else is relatively phenomenal and nonexistent."

Within fifty years the change in physical science has been marvelous. The atom, solidity and other properties of matter dissolve, and all converges toward Mind. Mrs. Eddy wrote Science and Health nearly half a century ago. She evidently little considered the great thinkers mentioned, yet she writes with unfaltering faith: "There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All in all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness; hence, man is spiritual and not material" (Science and Health, p. 468).

The writer as a student of truth (his idea of a disciple of Christ) read Mrs. Eddy's Science and Health. Then he read all the works he could find in opposition, and then re-read Science and Health. To him it answered them all, making some pretentious critics look small. Its truths trouble the materialism of our time. It shows deep spiritual discernment. Its vision is clear. The reader's failure to follow is the seeming obscurity. Its language is fitted to illumine its theme. Pungent statement, striking epigram clear illustration, suggestive symbolism, and splendor of imagination,—all go to make clear the perfect, ideal God, Christ, immortal man, and the spiritual universe. Such a book could not have been written save by one whose life had been touched by the light of the infinite. Yet the critic saw only a "tiresome jumble of involved sentences and cheap platitudes." (We read in John's Gospel that when there came "a voice from heaven" some "said that it thundered.") Whence the idea mentioned, that "happiness is offered without forgiveness, and salvation without the aid of the man of sorrows"? Deliverance from sin, sickness, and death runs like a golden thread through the book. For example, see page 5, "Sin is forgiven, only as it is destroyed by Christ."

An editorial in The Independent (Nov. 22) says of Christian Science: "None can question the deep faith of its adherents in God, their true discipleship of Jesus Christ, and the religious vitality of their Church. They are unfaltering believers in the Christian religion. ... Their faith shows itself in their works. ... The cures cannot be denied. ... [They] are capable of high ideals, and possess the potential of loyalty. They are of those who wish to look beneath the surface of things, and who can rise above the low levels of coarse matter into the higher spaces of spirituality."

In Mrs. Eddy's recent letter to The Independent are these words: "I thank God that for the past forty years I have returned good for evil, and that I can appeal to Him [God] as my witness to the truth of this statement. What we love determines what we are. I love the prosperity of Zion, be it promoted by Catholic, by Protestant, or by Christian Science, ... I would no more quarrel with a man because of his religion than I would because of his art."

We have noticed that Mrs. Eddy's followers avoid unfriendly criticism of churches and their neighbors. They are taught to think of the good and true; to cultivate the "mind of Christ," without which there can be no demonstration of religion in the health of the body. Is not their spirit a present necessity among the churches? In the late attack and reply their writers have been keenly alert, but kindly Christian; but if severe attacks from pulpits and churches are continued, the question will confront us, How much of the genuine religion of Christ is exemplified in our Christianity? Its moral supremacy is already being challenged among the nations. Lowell said, pungently, "The Church has corrupted Christianity; we are yet Huns and vandals, we have carved a cross upon our altars, but their smoke goes up to Thor and Odin still." If we live in glass houses we should be cautious about stone-throwing.

Recently the writer attended the Christian Science prayer meeting in Boston, and saw the usual audience of four thousand people. It was a simple devotional service. Some things were notable,—the concentrated interest of all the people; the large proportion of men; the unusual number and activity of young men. Never has he seen a great audience that seemed more sane, intelligent, fraternal, and devout. They are building great churches all over the country and paying for them. Their temples are everywhere thronged; their increase is the marvel of the age. They endanger only error and its creations.

As a Christian preacher and a friendly student and observer of the Christian Science movement, we will venture a word of advice to the critic; namely, the careful perusal of Acts, 5:38, 39, "Now I say unto you, Refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to naught: but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God."