The problem of human life and man's relation to his...

Richard P. Verrall

New York Commercial Advertiser

The problem of human life and man's relation to his Creator has certainly been an enigma to thinking men in all ages, and it is generally conceded that what appears to be perfectly rational to one section of the community often seems quite incredible to another. In the knowledge of this fact the great Nazarene Healer said to his grateful beneficiaries, "Tell no man," and again he admonished his students not to cast their pearls before those who were unprepared to receive them. St. Paul, also, said, "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."

The religious history of the world points to a constitutional resistance of the human race to spirituality, an element which is indispensable to health and happiness. Since the beginning of time, there has been opposition to both material and spiritual progress, and even in our day we have abundant illustrations of this tendency. Less than a century ago it was considered a thing incredible that iron could be made to float upon water, and an Englishman named Jonathan Hull, who attempted to build an iron steamboat, was considered a fit inmate for a lunatic asylum.

When we think of the tremendous revolutions which have taken place in industry, mechanics, and literature during the brief period of the Victorian era, are we not compelled to be at least hospitable toward the optimism of those who are successfully striving to advance the standard of Christian ethics and scientific religion? Why should not Christianity be capable of practical demonstration, and why should not science have a recognized relation to the Divine intelligence which launched the earth in its orbit, and maintains the order and motion of the vast Copernican system?

A correspondent says truly, "Christian Science is in its youth; but its adherents should remember that the youth always knows infinitely more than the man."

True, there are many beginners in Christian Science, most of whom are so intensely grateful for their emancipation from the bondage of disease that their first impulse is to proclaim the good tidings from the housetops. In due time, however, this youthful enthusiasm becomes tempered with more deliberate judgment, and they step down from the housetop and pursue the more practical method of letting their daily lives bear testimony to the hope which is in them.

Christian Science must eventually win its way by the good it is doing, and, although there is no reason to recede from the position taken by some of its younger adherents, it is nevertheless true that the wiser and more experienced exponents are inclined to labor and to wait, in the confident expectation that its great merits will some day be universally recognized. Richard P. Verrall.
New York Commercial Advertiser.

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