Jesus cast seven devils; but not one person was named among them. According
to Crabtre, these devils were the diseases Jesus cast out.

The most eminent divines, in Europe and America, concede that the
Scriptures have both a literal and a moral meaning. Which of the two is the
more important to gain,--the literal or the moral sense of the word
_devil_,--in order to cast out this devil? Evil is a quality, not an
individual.

As mortals, we need to discern the claims of evil, and to fight these
claims, not as realities, but as illusions; but Deity can have no such
warfare against Himself. Knowledge of a man's physical personality is not
sufficient to inform us as to the amount of good or evil he possesses.
Hence we cannot understand God or man, through the person of either. God is
All-in-all; but He is definite and individual, the omnipresent and
omniscient Mind; and man's individuality is God's own image and
likeness,--even the immeasurable idea of divine Mind. In the Science of
good, evil loses all place, person, and power.

According to Spinoza's philosophy God is amplification. He is in all
things, and therefore He is in evil in human thought. He is extension, of
whatever character. Also, according to Spinoza, man is an animal vegetable,
developed through the lower orders of matter and mortal mind. All these
vagaries are at variance with my system of metaphysics, which rests on God
as One and All, and denies the actual existence of both matter and evil.
According to false philosophy and scholastic theology, God is three persons
in one person. By the same token, evil is not only as real as good, but
much more real, since evil subordinates good in personality.

The claims of evil become both less and more in Christian Science, than in
human philosophies or creeds: _more_, because the evil that is hidden by
dogma and human reason is uncovered by Science; and _less_, because evil,
being thus uncovered, is found out, and exposure is nine points of
destruction. Then appears the grand verity of Christian Science: namely,
that evil has no claims and was never a claimant; for behold evil (or
devil) is, as Jesus said, "a murderer from the beginning, and the truth
abode not in him."

There was never a moment in which evil was real. This great fact concerning
all error brings with it another and more glorious truth, that good is
supreme. As there is none beside Him, and He is all good, there can be no
evil. Simply uttering this great thought is not enough! We must live it,
until God becomes the All and Only of our being. Having won through great
tribulation this cardinal point of divine Science, St. Paul said, "But now
we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that
we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the
letter."




IS MAN A PERSON?


Man is more than physical personality, or what we cognize through the
material senses. Mind is more than matter, even as the infinite idea of
Truth is beyond a finite belief. Man outlives finite mortal definitions of
himself, according to a law of "the survival of the fittest." Man is the
eternal idea of his divine Principle, or Father. He is neither matter nor a
mode of mortal mind, for he is spiritual and eternal, an immortal mode of
the divine Mind. Man is the image and likeness of God, coexistent and
coeternal with Him.

Man is not absorbed in Deity; for he is forever individual; but what this
everlasting individuality is, remains to be learned. Mortals have not seen
it. That which is born of the flesh is not man's eternal identity.
Spiritual and immortal man alone is God's likeness, and that which is
mortal is not man in a spiritually scientific sense. A material, sinful
mortal is but the counterfeit of immortal man.

The mind-quacks believe that mortal man is identical with immortal man,
and that the immortal is inside the mortal; that good and evil blend; that
matter and Spirit are one; and that Soul, or Spirit, is subdivided into
spirits, or souls,--_alias_ gods. This infantile talk about Mind-healing is
no more identical with Christian Science than the babe is identical with
the adult, or the human belief resembles the divine idea. Hence it is
impossible for those holding such material and mortal views to demonstrate
my metaphysics. Theirs is the sensuous thought, which brings forth its own
sensuous conception. Mine is the spiritual idea which transfigures thought.

All real being represents God, and is in Him. In this Science of being, man
can no more relapse or collapse from perfection, than his divine Principle,
or Father, can fall out of Himself into something below infinitude. Man's
real ego, or selfhood, is goodness. If man's individuality were evil, he
would be annihilated, for evil is self-destroying.

Man's individual being must reflect the supreme individual Being, to be His
image and likeness; and this individuality never originated in molecule,
corpuscle, materiality, or mortality. God holds man in the eternal bonds of
Science,--in the immutable harmony of divine law. Man is a celestial; and
in the spiritual universe he is forever individual and forever harmonious.
"If God so clothe the grass of the field, ... shall He not much more clothe
you, O ye of little faith?"

Sin must be obsolete,--dust returning to dust, nothingness to nothingness.
Sin is not Mind; it is but the supposition that there is more than one
Mind. It issues a false claim; and the claim, being worthless, is in
reality no claim whatever. Matter is not Mind, to claim aught; but Mind is
God, and evil finds no place in good. When we get near enough to God to see
this, the springtide of Truth in Christian Science will burst upon us in
the similitude of the Apocalyptic pictures. No night will be there, and
there will be no more sea. There will be no need of the sun, for Spirit
will be the light of the city, and matter will be proved a myth. Until
centuries pass, and this vision of Truth is fully interpreted by divine
Science, this prophecy will be scoffed at; but it is just as veritable now
as it can be then. Science, divine Science, presents the grand and eternal
verities of God and man as the divine Mind and that Mind's idea.

Mortal man is the antipode of immortal man, and the two should not be
confounded. Bishop Foster said, in a lecture in Boston, "No man living hath
yet seen man." This material sinful personality, which we misname man, is
what St. Paul terms "the old man and his deeds," to be "put off."

Who can say what the absolute personality of God or man is? Who living hath
seen God or a perfect man? In presence of such thoughts take off thy shoes
and tread lightly, for this is holy ground. Surely the probation of mortals
must go on after the change called death, that they may learn the
definition of immortal being; or else their present mistakes would
extinguish human existence. How long this false sense remains after the
transition called death, no mortal knoweth; but this is sure, that the
mists of error, sooner or later, will melt in the fervent heat of
suffering, mortality will burst the barriers of sense, and man be found
perfect and eternal. Of his intermediate conditions--the purifying
processes and terrible revolutions necessary to effect this end--I am
ignorant.

Inasmuch as these momentous facts in the Science of being must be learned
some time, now is the most acceptable time for beginning the lesson. If
Science is pointing the way, and is found to bring with it health,
holiness, and immortality, then to-day is none too soon for entering this
path. The proof that Christian Science is the way of salvation given by
Christ, I consider well established. The present, as well as the future,
reveals the fact that Truth is never understood too soon.

Has Truth, as demonstrated by Jesus, reappeared? Study Christian Science
and practise it, and you will know that Truth has reappeared. What is
demonstrably true cannot be gainsaid; but getting the letter and omitting
the spirit of this Science is neither the comprehension of its Principle
nor the practice of its Life.




HAS MAN A SOUL?


The Scriptures inform us that "the soul that sinneth, it shall die." Here
_soul_ means sense and organic life; and this passage refers to the Jewish
law, that a mortal should be put to death for his own sin, but not for
another's. Not Soul, but mortal sense, sins and dies. Immortal man has
immortal Soul and a deathless sense of being. Mortal man has but a false
sense of Soul and body. He believes that Spirit, or Soul, exists in matter.
This is pantheism, and is not the Science of Soul. The mind-quacks have so
slight a knowledge of Soul that they believe material and sinning sense to
be soul; and then they doctor this soul as if it were not even a material
sense.

In Dr. Gordon's sermon on The Ministry of Healing, he said, "The forgiven
soul in a sick body is not half a man." Is this pantheistic statement sound
theology,--that Soul is in matter, and the immortal part of man a sinner?
Is not this a disparagement of the person of man and a denial of God's
power? Better far that we impute such doctrines to mortal opinion than to
the divine Word.

To my sense, such a statement is a shocking reflection on the divine power.
A mortal pardoned by God is not sick, he is made whole. He in whom sin,
disease, and death are destroyed, is more than a fraction of himself. Such
sermons, though clad in soft raiment, are spiritless waifs, literary
driftwood on the ocean of thought; while Truth walks triumphantly over the
waves of sin, sickness, and death.

The law of Life and Truth is the law of Christ, destroying all sense of
sin and death. It does more than forgive the false sense named sin, for it
pursues and punishes it, and will not let sin go until it is
destroyed,--until nothing is left to be forgiven, to suffer, or to be
punished. Forgiven thus, sickness and sin have no relapse. God's law
reaches and destroys evil by virtue of the allness of God.

He need not know the evil He destroys, any more than the legislator need
know the criminal who is punished by the law enacted. God's law is in three
words, "I am All;" and this perfect law is ever present to rebuke any claim
of another law. God pities our woes with the love of a Father for His
child,--not by becoming human, and knowing sin, or naught, but by removing
our knowledge of what is not. He could not destroy our woes totally if He
possessed any knowledge of them. His sympathy is divine, not human. It is
Truth's knowledge of its own infinitude which forbids the genuine existence
of even a claim to error. This knowledge is light wherein there is no
darkness,--not light holding darkness within itself. The consciousness of
light is like the eternal law of God, revealing Him and nothing else.

Sympathy with sin, sorrow, and sickness would dethrone God as Truth, for
Truth has no sympathy for error. In Science, the cure of the sick
demonstrates this grand verity of Christian Science, that you cannot
eradicate disease if you admit that God sends it or sees it. Material and
mortal mind-healing (so-called) has for ages been a pretender, but has not
healed mortals; and they are yet sick and sinful.

Disease and sin appear to-day in subtler forms than they did yesterday.
They progress and will multiply into worse forms, until it is understood
that disease and sin are unreal, _unknown_ to Truth, and never actual
persons or real facts.

Our phraseology varies. To me _divine pardon_ is that divine presence which
is the sure destruction of sin; and I insist on the destruction of sin as
the only full proof of its pardon. "For this purpose the Son of God was
manifested, that he might _destroy_ the works of the devil" (1 John iii.
8).

Jesus cast out evils, mediating between what is and is not, until a perfect
consciousness is attained. He healed disease as he healed sin; but he
treated them both, not as in or of matter, but as mortal beliefs to be
exterminated. Physical and mental healing were one and the same with this
master Metaphysician. If the evils called sin, sickness, and death had been
forgiven in the generally accepted sense, they would have returned, to be
again forgiven; but Jesus said to disease: "Come out of him, and enter no
more into him." He said also: "If a man keep my saying, he shall never see
death;" and "Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in
heaven." The misinterpretation of such passages has retarded the progress
of Christianity and the spiritualization of the race.

A magistrate's pardon may encourage a criminal to repeat the offense;
because _forgiveness_, in the popular sense of the word, can neither
extinguish a crime nor the motives leading to it. The belief in sin--its
pleasure, pain, or power--must suffer, until it is self-destroyed.
"Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."




IS THERE ANY SUCH THING AS SIN?


Frequently when I touch this subject my meaning is ignorantly or
maliciously misconstrued. Christian Science Mind-healing lifts with a
steady arm, and cleaves sin with a broad battle-axe. It gives the lie to
sin, in the spirit of Truth; but other theories make sin true. Jesus
declared that the devil was "a liar, and the father of it." A lie is
negation,--_alias_ nothing, or the opposite of something. Good is great and
real. Hence its opposite, named _evil_, must be small and unreal. When this
sense is attained, we shall no longer be the servants of sin, and shall
cease to love it.

The domination of good destroys the sense of evil. To illustrate: It seems
a great evil to belie and belittle Christian Science, and persecute a Cause
which is healing its thousands and rapidly diminishing the percentage of
sin. But reduce this evil to its lowest terms, _nothing_, and slander
loses its power to harm; for even the wrath of man shall praise Him. The
reduction of evil, in Science, gives the dominance to God, and must lead us
to bless those who curse, that thus we may overcome evil with good.

If the Bible and my work Science and Health had their rightful place in
schools of learning, they would revolutionize the world by advancing the
kingdom of Christ. It requires sacrifice, struggle, prayer, and
watchfulness to understand and demonstrate what these volumes teach,
because they involve divine Science, with fixed Principle, a given rule,
and unmistakable proof.




IS THERE NO SACRIFICIAL ATONEMENT?


Self-sacrifice is the highway to heaven. The sacrifice of our blessed Lord
is undeniable, and it was a million times greater than the brief agony of
the cross; for that would have been insufficient to insure the glory his
sacrifice brought and the good it wrought. The spilling of human blood was
inadequate to represent the blood of Christ, the outpouring love that
sustains man's at-one-ment with God; though shedding human blood brought to
light the efficacy of divine Life and Love and its power over death. Jesus'
sacrifice stands preeminently amidst physical suffering and human woe. The
glory of human life is in overcoming sickness, sin, and death. Jesus
suffered for all mortals to bring in this glory; and his purpose was to
show them that the way out of the flesh, out of the delusion of all human
error, must be through the baptism of suffering, leading up to health,
harmony, and heaven.

We shall leave the ceremonial law when we gain the truer sense of following
Christ in spirit, and we shall no longer venture to materialize the
spiritual and infinite meaning and efficacy of Truth and Love, and the
sacrifice that Jesus made for us, by commemorating his death with a
material rite. Jesus said: "The hour cometh, and now is, when the true
worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth." They drink
the cup of Christ and are baptized in the purification of persecution who
discern his true merit,--the unseen glory of suffering for others. Physical
torture affords but a slight illustration of the pangs which come to one
upon whom the world of sense falls with its leaden weight in the endeavor
to crush out of a career its divine destiny.

The blood of Christ speaketh better things than that of Abel. The real
atonement--so infinitely beyond the heathen conception that God requires
human blood to propitiate His justice and bring His mercy--needs to be
understood. The real blood or Life of Spirit is not yet discerned. Love
bruised and bleeding, yet mounting to the throne of glory in purity and
peace, over the steps of uplifted humanity,--this is the deep significance
of the blood of Christ. Nameless woe, everlasting victories, are the blood,
the vital currents of Christ Jesus' life, purchasing the freedom of mortals
from sin and death.

This blood of Jesus is everything to human hope and faith. Without it, how
poor the precedents of Christianity! What manner of Science were Christian
Science without the power to demonstrate the Principle of such Life; and
what hope have mortals but through deep humility and adoration to reach the
understanding of this Principle! When human struggles cease, and mortals
yield lovingly to the purpose of divine Love, there will be no more
sickness, sorrow, sin, and death. He who pointed the way of Life conquered
also the drear subtlety of death.

It was not to appease the wrath of God, but to show the allness of Love and
the nothingness of hate, sin, and death, that Jesus suffered. He lived that
we also might live. He suffered, to show mortals the awful price paid by
sin, and how to avoid paying it. He atoned for the terrible unreality of a
supposed existence apart from God. He suffered because of the shocking
human idolatry that presupposes Life, substance, Soul, and intelligence in
matter,--which is the antipode of God, and yet governs mankind. The
glorious truth of being--namely, that God is the only Mind, Life,
substance, Soul--needs no reconciliation with God, for it is one with Him
now and forever.

Jesus came announcing Truth, and saying not only "the kingdom of God is at
hand," but "the kingdom of God is within you." Hence there is no sin, for
God's kingdom is everywhere and supreme, and it follows that the human
kingdom is nowhere, and must be _unreal_. Jesus taught and demonstrated
the infinite as one, and not as two. He did not teach that there are two
deities,--one infinite and the other finite; for that would be impossible.
He knew God as infinite, and therefore as the All-in-all; and we shall know
this truth when we awake in the divine likeness. Jesus' true and conscious
being never left heaven for earth. It abode forever above, even while
mortals believed it was here. He once spoke of himself (John iii. 13) as
"the Son of man which is in heaven,"--remarkable words, as wholly opposed
to the popular view of Jesus' nature.

The real Christ was unconscious of matter, of sin, disease, and death, and
was conscious only of God, of good, of eternal Life, and harmony. Hence the
human Jesus had a resort to his higher self and relation to the Father, and
there could find rest from unreal trials in the conscious reality and
royalty of his being,--holding the mortal as unreal, and the divine as
real. It was this retreat from material to spiritual selfhood which
recuperated him for triumph over sin, sickness, and death. Had he been as
conscious of these evils as he was of God, wherein there is no
consciousness of human error, Jesus could not have resisted them; nor could
he have conquered the malice of his foes, rolled away the stone from the
sepulchre, and risen from human sense to a higher concept than that in
which he appeared at his birth.

Mankind's concept of Jesus was a babe born in a manger, even while the
divine and ideal Christ was the Son of God, spiritual and eternal. In
human conception God's offspring had to grow, develop; but in Science his
divine nature and manhood were forever complete, and dwelt forever in the
Father. Jesus said, "Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power
of God." Mortal thought gives the eternal God and infinite consciousness
the license of a short-lived sinner, to begin and end, to know both evil
and good; when evil is temporal and God is eternal,--and when, as a sphere
of Mind, He cannot know beginning or end.

The spiritual interpretation of the vicarious atonement of Jesus, in
Christian Science, unfolds the full-orbed glory of that event; but to
regard this wonder of glory, this most marvellous demonstration, as a
personal and material bloodgiving--or as a proof that sin is known to the
divine Mind, and that what is unlike God demands His continual presence,
knowledge, and power, to meet and master it--would make the atonement to be
less than the _at-one-ment_, whereby the work of Jesus would lose its
efficacy and lack the "signs following."

From Genesis to Revelation the Scriptures teach an infinite God, and none
beside Him; and on this basis Messiah and prophet saved the sinner and
raised the dead,--uplifting the human understanding, buried in a false
sense of being. Jesus rendered null and void whatever is unlike God; but he
could not have done this if error and sin existed in the Mind of God. What
God knows, He also predestinates; and it must be fulfilled. Jesus proved
to perfection, so far as this could be done in that age, what Christian
Science is to-day proving in a small degree,--the falsity of the evidence
of the material senses that sin, sickness, and death are sensible claims,
and that God substantiates their evidence by knowing their claim. He
established the only true idealism on the basis that God is All, and He is
good, and good is Spirit; hence there is no intelligent sin, evil _mind_ or
matter: and this is the only true philosophy and realism. This divine
mystery of godliness was the rock of Truth, on which he built his Church of
the new-born, against which the gates of hell cannot prevail.

This Truth is the rock which the builders rejected; but "the same is become
the head of the corner." This is the chief corner-stone, the basis and
support of creation, the interpreter of one God, the infinity and unity of
good.

In proportion as mortals approximate the understanding of Christian
Science, they take hold of harmony, and material incumbrance disappears.
Having one God, one Mind, one consciousness,--which includes only His own
nature,--and loving your neighbor as yourself, constitute Christian
Science, which must demonstrate the nothingness of any other state or stage
of being.




IS THERE NO INTERCESSORY PRAYER?


All prayer that is desire is intercessory; but kindling desire loses a part
of its purest spirituality if the lips try to express it. It is a truism
that we can think more lucidly and profoundly than we can write or speak.
The silent intercession and unvoiced imploring is an honest and potent
prayer to heal and save. The audible prayer may be offered to be heard of
men, though ostensibly to catch God's ear,--after the fashion of Baal's
prophets,--by speaking loud enough to be heard; but when the heart prays,
and not the lips, no dishonesty or vanity influences the petition.

Prophet and apostle have glorified God in secret prayer, and He has
rewarded them openly. Prayer can neither change God, nor bring His designs
into mortal modes; but it can and does change our modes and our false sense
of Life, Love, and Truth, uplifting us to Him. Such prayer humiliates,
purifies, and quickens activity, in the direction that is unerring.

True prayer is not asking God for love; it is learning to love, and to
include all mankind in one affection. Prayer is the utilization of the love
wherewith He loves us. Prayer begets an awakened desire to be and do good.
It makes new and scientific discoveries of God, of His goodness and power.
It shows us more clearly than we saw before, what we already have and are;
and most of all, it shows us what God is. Advancing in this light, we
reflect it; and this light reveals the pure Mind-pictures, in silent
prayer, even as photography grasps the solar light to portray the face of
pleasant thought.

What but silent prayer can meet the demand, "Pray without ceasing"? The
apostle James said: "Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, to
consume it on your lusts." Because of vanity and self-righteousness,
mortals seek, and expect to receive, a material sense of approval; and they
expect also what is impossible,--a material and mortal sense of spiritual
and immortal Truth.

It is sometimes wise to hide from dull and base ears the pure pearls of
awakened consciousness, lest your pearls be trampled upon. Words may belie
desire, and pour forth a hypocrite's prayer; but thoughts are our honest
conviction. I have no objection to audible prayer of the right kind; but
the inaudible is more effectual.

I instruct my students to pursue their mental ministrations very sacredly,
and never to touch the human thought save to issues of Truth; never to
trespass mentally on individual rights; never to take away the rights, but
only the wrongs of mankind. Otherwise they forfeit their ability to heal in
Science. Only when sickness, sin, and fear obstruct the harmony of Mind and
body, is it right for one mind to meddle with another mind, and control
aright the thought struggling for freedom.

It is Truth and Love that cast out fear and heal the sick, and mankind are
better because of this. If a change in the religious views of the patient
comes with the change to health, our Father has done this; for the human
mind and body are made better only by divine influence.




SHOULD CHRISTIANS BEWARE OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE?


History repeats itself. The Pharisees of old warned the people to beware of
Jesus, and contemptuously called him "this fellow." Jesus said, "For which
of these works do ye stone me?" as much as to ask, Is it the work most
derided and envied that is most acceptable to God? Not that he would cease
to do the will of his Father on account of persecution, but he would repeat
his work to the best advantage for mankind and the glory of his Father.

There are sinners in all societies, and it is vain to look for perfection
in churches or associations. The life of Christ is the perfect example; and
to compare mortal lives with this model is to subject them to severe
scrutiny. Without question, the subtlest forms of sin are trying to force
the doors of Science and enter in; but this white sanctuary will never
admit such as come to steal and to rob. Through long ages people have
slumbered over Christ's commands, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the
gospel;" "Heal the sick, cast out devils;" and now the Church seems almost
chagrined that by new discoveries of Truth sin is losing prestige and
power.

The Rev. Dr. A.J. Gordon, a Boston Baptist clergyman, said in a sermon:
"The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and it is doing it to-day; and as
the faith of the Church increases, and Christians more and more learn
their duty to believe all things written in the Scriptures, will such
manifestations of God's power increase among us." Such sentiments are
wholesome avowals of Christian Science. God is not unable or unwilling to
heal, and mortals are not compelled to have other gods before Him, and
employ material forms to meet a mental want. The divine Spirit supplies all
human needs. Jesus said to the sick, "Thy sins are forgiven thee; rise up
and walk!" God's pardon is the destruction of all "the ills that flesh is
heir to."

All power belongs to God; and it is not in all the vain power of dogma and
philosophy to dispossess the divine Mind of healing power, or to cast out
error with error, even in the name and for the sake of Christ, and so heal
the sick. While Science is engulfing error in bottomless oblivion, the
material senses would enthrone error as omnipotent and omnipresent, with
power to determine the fact and fate to being. It is said that the devil is
the ape of God. The lie of evil holds its own by declaring itself both true
and good. The path of Christian Science is beset with false claimants,
aping its virtues, but cleaving to their own vices. Denial of the
authorship of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" would make a
lie the author of Truth, and so make Truth itself a lie.

A distinguished clergyman came to be healed. He said: "I am suffering from
nervous prostration, and have to eat beefsteak and drink strong coffee to
support me through a sermon." Here a skeptic might well ask if the
atonement had lost its efficacy for him, and if Christ's power to heal was
not equal to the power of daily meat and drink. The power of Truth is not
contingent on matter. Our Master said, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Truth rebukes error; and
whether stall-fed or famishing, theology needs Truth to stimulate and
sustain a good sermon.

A lady said: "Only He who knows all things can estimate the good your books
are doing."

A distinguished Doctor of Divinity said: "Your book leavens my sermons."

The following extract from a letter is a specimen of those received daily:
"Your book Science and Health is healing the sick, binding up the
broken-hearted, preaching deliverance to the captive, convicting the
infidel, alarming the hypocrite, and quickening the Christian."

Christian Science Mind-healing is dishonored by those who take it up from
mercenary motives, for wealth and fame, or think to build a baseless fabric
of their own on another's foundation. They cannot put the "new wine into
old bottles;" they can never engraft Truth into error. Such students come
to my College to learn a system which they go away to disgrace. Stealing or
garbling my statements of Mind-science will never prevent or reconstruct
the wrecks of "_isms_" and help humanity.

Science often suffers blame through the sheer ignorance of people, while
envy and hatred bark and bite at its heels. A man's inability to heal, on
the Principle of Christian Science, substantiates his ignorance of its
Principle and practice, and incapacitates him for correct comment. This
failure should make him modest.

Christian Science involves a new language, and a higher demonstration of
medicine and religion. It is the "new tongue" of Truth, having its best
interpretation in the power of Christianity to heal. My system of
Mind-healing swerves not from the highest ethics and from the spiritual
goal. To climb up by some other way than Truth is to fall. Error has no
hobby, however boldly ridden or brilliantly caparisoned, that can leap into
the sanctum of Christian Science.

In Queen Elizabeth's time Protestantism could sentence men to the dungeon
or stake for their religion, and so abrogate the rights of conscience and
choke the channels of God. Ecclesiastical tyranny muzzled the mouth lisping
God's praise; and instead of healing, it palsied the weak hand outstretched
to God. Progress, legitimate to the human race, pours the healing balm of
Truth and Love into every wound. It reassures us that no Reign of Terror or
rule of error will again unite Church and State, or re-enact, through the
civil arm of government, the horrors of religious persecution.

The Rev. S.E. Herrick, a Congregational clergyman of Boston, says:
"Heretics of yesterday are martyrs to-day." In every age and clime, "On
earth peace, good will toward men" must be the watchword of Christianity.

Jesus said: "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou
hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them
unto babes."

St. Paul said that without charity we are "as sounding brass, or a tinkling
cymbal;" and he added: "Charity suffereth long, and is kind; ... doth not
behave itself unseemly, ... thinketh no evil, ... but rejoiceth in the
truth."

To hinder the unfolding truth, to ostracize whatever uplifts mankind, is of
course out of the question. Such an attempt indicates weakness, fear, or
malice; and such efforts arise from a spiritual lack, felt, though
unacknowledged.

Let it not be heard in Boston that woman, "last at the cross and first at
the sepulchre," has no rights which man is bound to respect. In natural law
and in religion the right of woman to fill the highest measure of
enlightened understanding and the highest places in government, is
inalienable, and these rights are ably vindicated by the noblest of both
sexes. This is woman's hour, with all its sweet amenities and its moral and
religious reforms.

Drifting into intellectual wrestlings, we should agree to disagree; and
this harmony would anchor the Church in more spiritual latitudes, and so
fulfil her destiny.

Let the Word have free course and be glorified. The people clamor to leave
cradle and swaddling-clothes. The spiritual status is urging its highest
demands on mortals, and material history is drawing to a close. Truth
cannot be stereotyped; it unfoldeth forever. "One on God's side is a
majority;" and "Lo, I am with you alway," is the pledge of the Master.

The question now at issue is: Shall we have a practical, spiritual
Christianity, with its healing power, or shall we have material medicine
and superficial religion? The advancing hope of the race, craving health
and holiness, halts for a reply; and the reappearing Christ, whose
life-giving understanding Christian Science imparts, must answer the
constant inquiry: "Art thou he that should come?" Woman should not be
ordered to the rear, or laid on the rack, for joining the overture of
angels. Theologians descant pleasantly upon free moral agency; but they
should begin by admitting individual rights.

The author's ancestors were among the first settlers of New Hampshire. They
reared there the Puritan standard of undefiled religion. As dutiful
descendants of Puritans, let us lift their standard higher, rejoicing, as
Paul did, that we are _free born_.

Man has a noble destiny; and the full-orbed significance of this destiny
has dawned on the sick-bound and sin-enslaved. For the unfolding of this
upward tendency to health, greatness, and goodness, I shall continue to
labor and wait.