A clerical critic says, "If religion is capable of healing the infirmities of the body, then religion is science, in so far at least as its relation to the human organism is concerned; and more than that, it is healing and healer combined.
Christian Science affirms that the only indestructible eternal essence is good, and that to seek to impose upon mankind the necessity of believing in the actual existence of a rival and hostile power is the strangest disservice that can be attempted in the name of him who came to destroy, for humanity in distress, the devil and all his works.
As the statements of Christian teaching are understood, it will be acknowledged by the honest and earnest follower of Christ that the theology and philosophy of Christian Science is as perfect in its simplicity as the Science of Christianity is exact and invariable in its Principle and rules.
If there were nothing to be considered in the treatment of children by Christian Science but the argument of those whose knowledge of the system had been learned only by hearsay or by superficial reading or theory, the talk of our critic might be taken seriously.
Unbiased investigation will prove beyond question that Christian Scientists are neither "weak-minded" nor "easily tempted by illusive bait," but that they have embraced this faith because it has been proven to them through actual experience to have met their needs, in sickness as well as in health, in a more practical and efficacious way than did the systems previously employed.
The material senses of the people amongst whom Jesus moved rarely rose to a clear perception of his words; and so, telling them that if they could not believe for the word's sake they must found their belief upon the works, he healed the sick and raised the dead and walked upon the waters, breaking every physical law in demonstration of the fact that those laws were not God's laws, and that a knowledge of God's law—that is, the spiritual law—would give man the dominion which the Bible declared God had given to him.
