POSSIBLE AND PRACTICABLE

Archibald McLellan

It is said that when Professor Morse was struggling to introduce the telegraph which he had invented, a certain congressman who with others had voted to appropriate a sum of money for the construction of an experimental line, was opposed for reelection on the ground that he had wasted public money upon a scheme which was entirely impracticable ; and he was defeated for this reason. In much the same way, Christian Science has been opposed because of the educated belief that the only way the sick can be healed is through the administration or application of material remedies.

The prevailing belief that the telegraph was impracticable readily gave way before the accomplished fact of telegraphy, and the present generation has become so familiar with this means of communication that it can scarcely realize there was a time when telegraphy was unknown. In the same way the belief that mankind are subject to diseases which can be overcome only by material remedies, is giving place to understanding that disease is not a part of the reality of man's being: and in human experience men are healed today through spiritual means as they were healed by Christ Jesus and his immediate followers in the dawn of the Christian era. The telegraph became an accepted fact because people were given the opportunity to make use of it, and to see for themselves that it did what was claimed for it.

Christian Science likewise is becoming an accepted fact to a constantly enlarging portion of humanity, for the same reason and in the same way. That which seems to stand in the same way of universal acceptance of this teaching at the present time is an inherited belief that disease cannot be cured except through material means; and that when material means fail, disease is incurable. The strangest thing about this belief is, that it exists notwithstanding the central, most influential, and best known figure of history proved beyond doubt that it was untrue. Just to the extent, however, that Christian Scientists, following in the footsteps of their great Master, prove by their works that this belief is still untrue, it will vanish from human experience, even as the false belief about telegraphy vanished before the actual demonstration of its utility.

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THE SELF-COMPLACENCY OF BELIEF