Article October 7, 1911 Issue

It is just as well to remember that the spread of Christian Science...

William J. Bonnin

Rochdale (Eng.) Observer

It is just as well to remember that the spread of Christian Science from the day, some forty years ago, when there was one Christian Scientist in the world, a delicate and lonely woman without material resources of any kind in an obscure American village, to this day, when it is able to count its hundreds of churches and its hundreds of thousands of adherents in all parts of the world, is a thing unparalleled in history. Is it possible for such a movement to be based on "unmitigated bosh"? Is it not just possible that these thousands who rise up and bless Christian Science for what it has done for them may have after all seen something in it that has escaped the critics?

Of course, that is just what they have done. They have seen and experienced its saving power. They have watched it prove Christianity to be a living power, available now and here. They have demonstrated it. From all parts of the world come reports of the healing of organic diseases of the severest types. Christian Science is Christian idealism, and wherein it differs from philosophic idealism may be said to lie in the true meaning of "Christian." One evidence of that difference is seen in the practical nature of its idealism, which is not a thing of theory and conjecture, but a system to be practised and proved. After all, one is driven to base all being or knowledge on either a materialistic or an idealistic foundation, or else on a sort of mixture of both, the ordinary dualism of the day. This dualism, with its unending problems and perplexities and contradictions, its mysteries of sin and evil and pain, and its consequent conflict of creeds and religions and civilizations, is, in the light of Christian Science, but the attempt to serve two masters, God and mammon. The invitation of Christian Science is to serve God alone.

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