Article September 30, 1911 Issue

How was it possible, in a country already overrun with...

Frank Putnam

Houston (Tex.) Chronicle

How was it possible, in a country already overrun with competing religious organizations, for a woman, stricken for years with ill health, dwelling in comparative obscurity and knowing but few people, to face the contemptuous laughter of powerful leaders of organized society, and within three decades establish a new religious society worldwide in extent?

That question, in various forms, I have heard asked by men of many minds during the past decade, but I have never heard any satisfactory answer. During a recent visit to New England, the birthplace of Christian Science, it occurred to me that the answer was in plain sight, so obvious, so easily seen, that it had, as usual in this world, been overlooked by the inquirers seeking for some deeply mysterious explanation of the phenomenon. With a membership now of unnumbered thousands, the Christian Science church cannot any longer be regarded as an experiment. It has taken its place beside the world's oldest and mightiest religious organizations, and apparently it will survive as long as any of its competitors.

Christian Science has won its success by delivering the goods. Just that. Nothing more. What has it delivered, and now? It has delivered to mankind a new faith in "the divinity that shapes our ends." It found a people nine tenths of whom were worried day and night by overwork and the fear of want in old age, and one tenth of whom were made grossly, cynically materialistic by possession of too much wealth, too much leisure, too much freedom for indulgence in the animal appetites of the race. It found most of these people unwilling or unable any longer really to believe in the healing power of divine Love. It found the churches as a rule with a dwindling male attendance, upheld chiefly by women. It found everywhere visible evidences of a formal acceptance of Christian creeds, but nowhere the old trust in divine goodness and divine power to lighten and uplift the lives of men.

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