Editorial September 24, 1932 Issue

No Retrograde Step

W. Stuart Booth

The recognized accomplishments of Christian Science are so great, so varied, and so widespread as to evoke expressions of wonderment even from observers who are unacquainted with its spiritual teachings. When Mrs. Eddy announced that her discovery of Christian Science would lead to the reinstatement of primitive Christianity, together with its lost element of healing, she thereby accepted the test of Christian discipleship set by Christ Jesus, "By their fruits ye shall know them." That Mrs. Eddy was divinely directed in her marvelous work is shown by the response to her spiritual announcement. For the appeal of her teachings to humanity's sense of reason and justice has been supported by the healing of the sick, the comforting of the sorrowing, and the liberation of those who had been slaves to sin.

But great as are these healing proofs and their promise, they do not measure the whole of the influence of Christian Science upon human lives and thought. Recent changes to greater liberalism in religious teachings direct our thoughts to Mrs. Eddy's words in her Message to The Mother Church for 1902 (p. 2), "Christian Science, the little leaven hid in three measures of meal, — ethics, medicine, and religion, — is rapidly fermenting, and enlightening the world with the glory of untrammelled truth." How right and reasonable, yes, how inevitable is this!

Christian Science reveals the truth about God and the universe, including man, so definitely, and withal so simply, that it is entirely capable of proof by any honest student of its teachings. The declaration that God, the creator of all reality, is infinite Mind includes the fact that man, God's image and likeness, is like Mind and lives in the realm of Mind. The recognition and acknowledgment of this spiritual fact by mankind is far-reaching in its healing results. For the true ideas from God which heal the ills of mankind by displacing the fear and other errors which occasion the ills — these true ideas, being everywhere present, touch and influence the thought of mankind generally. Thus Christian Scientists recognize that certain salutary changes in the thought of mankind regarding religion, medicine, and ethics, are due to the leaven of Christian Science.

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