Those who have heard the call of Christian Science know it is a call to action. It demands righteous living and straightforward dealing. It is not a quack remedy, or a means of making money, but the way of life taught by Christ Jesus, the way of self-abnegation, purity, and prayer which demonstrates step by step the infinitude of good. Those who hear the call and heed it do not balk at its demands. Those who have made it their own, value beyond words the balm of spiritual healing and the freedom of spiritual redemption. Their gratitude for deliverance from disease, sin, and limitation overflows, and the willingly lay their all upon the altar of Truth and Love.

What prepared Mary Baker Eddy's thought for the discovery of Christian Science? What made it possible for her to succeed in discovering and founding a Science so long hidden? Among the contributory causes which made it possible was undoubtedly Mrs. Eddy's Puritan background. She writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 359), "From Puritan parents, the discoverer of Christian Science early received her religious education." For generations Mrs. Eddy's forebears followed the rigid rules of Puritanism common to the grand men and women who came from across the Atlantic to colonize the continent of North America. Mrs. Eddy's discovery of Christian Science did not make her less of a puritan in the literal meaning of that term. Indeed, it revealed a greater purity than her ancestors had ever known, for it revealed the pure essence of Truth which came into the world through Christ Jesus.

The early Puritans were dogmatic and often intolerant, but they preached and upheld the standard of righteous living. The religious convictions of the Puritans sprang from the heart more than the head. John Bunyan, staunch Puritan and author of "The Pilgrim's Progress," wrote of his work:

Mrs. Eddy's estimate of the Puritans is significant: "The Puritans possessed the motive of true religion, which, demonstrated on the Golden Rule, would have solved ere this the problem of religious liberty and human rights" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 181). Christian Science includes nothing dogmatic or intolerant, but emphasizes the necessity of righteous living as a step towards spiritualization. It upholds freedom of conscience and insists on the right of the individual to think and act as he feels best.

It has sometimes been said that Christian Scientists are puritanical and make no concessions to those who do not agree with them. In other words, they will not lower the standard in order to accommodate an inquirer who finds it too high. It should be remembered that Christian Science is exact Science, permitting no deviations from the recognized standard of perfect God and perfect man as the basis of thought and conduct. Only as this standard is lived and adhered to, is it possible to demonstrate the Science or prove the simplest proposition. Just as a neglect of the principle of mathematics makes it impossible to work out a mathematical problem, so neglect of the laws of God makes the prayers of a Christian Scientist ineffective. For this reason the call to righteous living is imperative.

While it is unnecessary for every Christian Scientist to have had the background of a Puritan parentage, it is well for us all to recognize the lessons which Puritanism teaches, such as simplicity, prayer, consecration, reverence, fearlessness, and a love of the Scriptures. Christian Science is not a return to Puritanism. Christian Science is unique because it is the discovery of the Science of Christ, which creeds and dogmas have tended to obscure rather than to clarify.

Mrs. Eddy's writings sound a call to righteousness, but not to self-righteousness. The elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son was a good son, but he was self-righteous. He believed goodness to be personal; he considered he possessed something that his prodigal brother did not have. In this he was little better than his brother. The father's rebuke to his elder son was pointed (Luke 15:31): "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine."

The word "righteousness" as used in the older Scriptures stems from a Hebrew word meaning to cleanse. It indicates purity of thought; and therefore to be conscious of the pure, the good, and the true is to be righteous, in other words, to be conscious of the nature of God. In the words of the great Master (Luke 18:19), "None is good, save one, that is, God."

The belief of self-righteousness assumes a selfhood apart from God, but there is no such selfhood. Mrs. Eddy writes; (Science and Health, p. 276), "Man and his Maker are correlated in divine Science, and real consciousness is cognizant only of the things of God."

The call of Christian Science is therefore a call to righteousness, to the rightness which is of God. The Puritan model is helpful because it demands simplification, purity, and sanctified living, but it should be remembered that righteous living, as now demonstrated, is only a first step in the Science of Christ, a Science so vast that few of us have as yet done more than touch the fringe of it.

Robert Ellis Key