Article May 20, 1922 Issue

I have said that I would answer the question this morning,...

Darien (Conn.) Review

I have said that I would answer the question this morning, "Why Does Christian Science Succeed?" Why are people pouring into the Christian Science churches, sometimes going out from our own ranks to join and swell their numbers? This is the fact. Not one, I think, will deny it, for it is easily demonstrable.

First let me answer the question, What is success? success for the church? It is compliance with the command of Christ, and his command is to preach the gospel to every creature. That is the church's missionary charter for all time. We are to preach the good tidings, then, to "every creature," Christ's own good tidings or gospel. Evidently, then, success is attending those who, attempting to reach "every creature," best succeed in doing it, provided that when they reach the people they preach Christ and not the traditions of men! Let us be sure of one thing: Where the people are reached in great numbers and influenced for right living there is a good degree of obedience to Christ. Where in numbers the people desert, there it is time to awake out of sleep. Where the love of Christ is put in the foreground and taught as the great dynamic, the great compelling power in human life, there the people come, because the human heart is full of sorrow and anxiety and fear and depression. And the gospel of Christ is the antidote to all this.

The Christian Scientists are succeeding because they do not obscure or sidetrack the things the Master himself taught, or smother it under cartloads of human rubbish. So great is the drawing power of the gospel of Christ, supplying present strength for present needs, that no matter by whom taught, it can flood the land. No amount of satire and ridicule can stay its advance any more than stones thrown into the ocean can stop the rising tide. Here the thing is, thrusting itself upon us continually,—Christian Science succeeds, and, claiming a place as a Christian church, they present the good tidings of Christ in such a way as to satisfy the soul longings of good men and women of culture and higher education in the most important towns and cities of our land. What is the explanation of it? There is an explanation; and if we ourselves love Christ and his gospel as we profess to do, we must seek it out and see where we ourselves are at fault. To assail and make sport of the Christian Scientists while they are drawing more of the children of God than we are, is not only wicked and un-Christian but it is suicidal as well. One clergyman sent me his lenten pastoral in which he declared that "Christian Science and other modern cults are leading people to destruction." That is the sort of statement which helps to bring the church we love into contempt in this day when we are only holding our own and they are growing by leaps and bounds. It is to apply the ecclesiastical standard instead of the Christ-standard, who taught that "by their fruits ye shall know them."

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