Article September 11, 1915 Issue

The remarkable spread of Christian Science is due to...

Frank Bell—Bradford, Pa.

The Star

The remarkable spread of Christian Science is due to various causes. No doubt persecution has contributed somewhat to this result. Religious persecution is no longer a thing of prison, rack, or fagot, but of such devices as ridicule and social ostracism. Happily, these expedients have been no more effective for the purpose intended than were the physical tortures that preceded them. The blacker the picture painted of Christian Science in sermon or circular, the more likely are hearers and readers to be impressed with the irreconcilable difference between Christian Science as it is alleged to be and Christian Science as it manifests itself in its effects upon those who put its precepts into practice.

There must always be in any community numbers of thinking persons to whom the question naturally comes as to why those who think they have something so much better than Christian Science, should devote their time to saying unkind things about the latter instead of demonstrating the superiority of their own. The Christian Scientist is taught that the best and only way to promote his religion is to prove to mankind what it will do here and now for the sick and the sinning.

A little investigation will convince any unprejudiced inquirer that Christian Science does not in any important respect resemble the description recently given. No one who wishes to be well informed need take the word of any one else, for knowledge of Christian Science, like knowledge of mathematics, is not a matter of some one's say-so, but of individual test and experience. It has never been offered on any other basis, and it has become a world-wide religion in less than half a century, because it proposes to prove to the satisfaction of any earnest seeker that it is genuine and complete Christianity, the kind the Master said would be known by its fruits in the establishment of both health and righteousness among men.

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