Article December 11, 1909 Issue

All but one of the tidal waves of religion that we know...

From "The Growth of Christian Science" by Wilder D. Quint

New England Magazine

All but one of the tidal waves of religion that we know today have historical perspective, and can simply and easily be accounted for. We are far enough away from the inception of them to recognize the truth. With that important spiritual and moral movement which has arisen within a generation and whose remarkable and ever-increasing power is a part of daily experience, the case is somewhat different. We find difficulty in seeing the forest because of the trees, so that a good many just and otherwise fair-minded observers are prone to lose their usual sense of perspective in the viewing of a new religion. That is why Christian Science, the latest and one of the most astonishing manifestations of mortal awakening, arouses a violence of controversial assault wholly out of proportion to the placidity and poise with which it proceeds on its way.

It is not difficult to find reasons for this bitterness; but the chief and truest of all may justly be said to be, so far as the great masses of the people are concerned, that it is seen very much out of focus by those who will not, or cannot, sanely adjust their mental lenses. But however it is seen, whatever is thought of it, Christian Science is a present-day, active force that must be reckoned with. It is here, and apparently to stay. It is spreading over the whole world. It is drawing to itself thousands upon thousands of the unsatisfied in other denominations and as many more of the altogether unchurched. No longer can jeremiads from the pulpits of older religious institutions drown out its voice; no more is the scorn of the medical profession it is so strongly influencing, sufficient to lessen its daily accessions of converts to any appreciable degree.

One day, when a little more of that highly essential time-perspective has been attained, some historian with a keen sense of the romantic in religion and the just appreciation of a mental concept that appeals to the heart, will write the story of the earlier days of Christian Science as it should be written. That time has not yet come. But even now there is a certain fascination in comparing the slender, tentative, half discouraging beginning with the triumphant facts of 1909.

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