THE REASON WHY

ARTHUR CHAMBERLAIN

Whatever opinion non-Scientists may entertain of Christian Science, one fact stands out and cannot be gainsaid. In a little more than one generation Christian Science has won thousands of followers, and its churches have sprung up both on the continents and in the isles of the sea. This is the admitted fact, and however non-Scientists may undertake to explain it, no explanation suffices save one; that Christian Science has proved itself a practical religion in human experience.

Within the last two decades it has been apparent that even popular theology has not been satisfied with a teaching that postpones better conditions to another state of existence; the cry of the oppressed went up, and the churches sought to meet it. The institutional church was the outgrowth of this movement,—a church that provided day nurseries, mothers' meetings, free legal advice, flower missions, relief committees, entertainments; a church that attempted to take the social system on its own merits and thereby to make men happier and better. The motive was excellent, the results have been meager. People accepted the opportunities offered them, and went their way for the most part; they patronized the church, but evinced little loyalty in its support. The church became to them largely a means of free supply and of social amusement; its special theology became almost a negligible factor with a great proportion of the attendants.

Yet it is highly improbable that any of these churches would have taken the ground that it was along such lines as these that Christianity arose as an overwhelming force in the first century of the Christian era. Technically, all churches that accounted historic Christianity veritable were preaching Christ and the power of his resurrection as the key to eternal life, yet a preaching that had quickened men to holier living in the first century seemed to be practically powerless in the nineteenth.

Let us consider the conditions which the primitive Christians went forth to meet. Skepticism as to eternal life was widespread. Apart from Hebrew belief the world had small hope of immortality and was largely atheistic as well. The Greeks admitted the inadequacy of their Olympian deities in their altar to an unknown god. Rome, in despair of gods, deified her emperors. Egyptian immortality was an immortality of the flesh. Zoroastrianism was a dualism, divided between beliefs in good and evil. Even among the Hebrews an influential sect, the Sadducees, denied immortality. Suddenly there appeared a handful of enthusiastic men, preaching—what? Nothing less than this: that a Nazarene carpenter, who had declared himself to be the Son of God, had reappeared to them after his burial, eating and drinking and talking with them, having a form that they could not only perceive but handle, and had finally disappeared before their eyes!

Is it conceivable that such statements would have met with anything but utter incredulity, unless they were promptly backed up by proof? Would the haughty Roman or the philosophic Greek have cared for the merely verbal statements and arguments of a few Hebrews, whose words, moreover, were generally discredited by their own countrymen? No! The preaching of Christ and the power of his resurrection, accompanied by no demonstration of that power, would never have swept like flame through the social and civil world of that day; neither does it nor will it avail after nineteen hundred years have passed. Now as then, men care very little for unproved doctrines. Doubtless they would be glad of better material conditions, but with all deference to the excellent intentions of popular theology, men find the churches practically helpless in the face of modern industrial conditions, and the cry goes up not for alms nor amusement, but for justice and legitimate opportunity.

Slowly, but no less surely, men are learning that nothing avails but eternal righteousness; and we recognize with gratitude that it is through the steady, persistent, loving work of our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, that we have been taught the demonstrable truth—that rightness of mind is manifested in rightness of body; that holiness means wholeness, health; and that no preaching, however eloquent or learned, avails to give men dominion over the obstacles and impediments of every-day life, inabilities resulting from sickness and from sin, save it is "in demonstration of the Spirit and of power."

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