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."

The Christian Scientists are not dissipated, immoral, haters, narrow-minded, cheerless, harsh in their judgments of fellow-beings, gossips, and mischief makers. I must bear witness that they stand for a high type of Christ's Christianity. It was said of the early Christians that "the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church." So I believe that denunciation of Christian Science has had much to do with its spread and its extraordinary success. We may be ourselves—and are—very far from becoming Christian Scientists; but let us be very confident that the Christian Scientists can teach us a sadly needed lesson which they have learned from our Lord's own teaching by a careful study of his precepts in the parables and Beatitudes and in the Sermon on the Mount. I well remember before the Christian Scientists had formed a church what one of my professors at Sewanee, now the presiding bishop of the Church Council, said about them: "The church cast aside a jewel, and a woman picked it up." This refers to the power to heal which our Lord left with his church.

I attribute the success of Christian Science not alone or chiefly to their physical healing, but to their earnest endeavor to spread our Lord's gospel of love to God and man, preaching it from house to house and from street to street wherever they have spread. Here are Mrs. Eddy's own words. (I hold her book in my hand.) "Is healing the sick the whole of Science? Healing physical sickness is the smallest part of Christian Science. It is only the bugle-call to thought and action, in the higher range of infinite goodness. The emphatic purpose of Christian Science is the healing of sin; and this task, sometimes, may be harder than the cure of disease; because, while mortals love to sin, they do not love to be sick" (Rudimental Divine Science, p. 2). And my object in preaching this sermon is to plead with all who come within reach of my voice or influence, to labor to spread the Master's teaching among yourselves and all you can reach out to day by day.

Not theological accuracy or metaphysical consistency commend themselves to-day to those who would follow Christ and become his disciples; but that which men live by—love—the greatest thing in the world—gentle judgment, long-suffering, sympathy, fellowship, self-sacrifice; in a word, goodness, Christliness. If the church fails in loyalty to Christ and tries to propagate from her chancels and pulpits other teaching than his, she must not wonder when those who do obey him steal away the multitude from her courts.

Would the Episcopal church with its splendid latent power, its long heritage of great names and vast accomplishments, fill the land with renown for Christ? Let its members and adherents show the enthusiasm for Christ that the Christian Scientists show! Let them fill once again the pews they have so carelessly and lukewarmly deserted! Let them put aside their cruel hates, their mean dislikes, their petty religious jealousies and prejudices. Let them break the fetters which bind the soul in bondage to the body and fight like a mighty army for victory of the mind over the tyrants, anger, fear, hate, worry, unbelief, depression. Let them show forth in their lives the gospel of Christ in all its vigor of spiritual and physical health and love and joy and peace! Let the church of Christ to-day lay aside her dignity and her pride and preach the gospel of Christ in its beautiful simplicity and power, and the defection from her ranks will cease. Then men and women will believe in the church as they never did, and she will become again the power Christ meant her to be.

The Christian Scientists are living in the early part of their first century. They came on the stage of the world's drama at the beginning of an age of tremendous religious enthusiasm; not enthusiasm for theology or dogma, but enthusiasm for religion—right doing towards God and man. More than that they helped to create the enthusiasm and to spread it. They have found more unpolished diamonds in the mass of unchurched people than the old churches dreamed existed. All these modern people who have gone to the new religion are not seeking to do a wrong thing! They are not turning their backs on the old church out of some perversity or spite. They are seeking spiritual help and sustenance. They want Christ preached to them in the power and simplicity of his own gospel. I think more people are talking and reading and thinking to-day about living a practical Christian life than there ever were before.