Sunday, June 28th, 2026 Roundtable

Know every day that the world is ready for Christian Science.
Just when the mortal mind says, I can’t, you must know you can, for I can is the son of ‘I am.’
Do not say, ‘This is my error or my pain.’ Say, ‘This is an attack against my Christ.’

MEMORANDA —

1. Pray God to help you awake to the claims of error, and awake to the truth that destroys them.
2. Whenever error would try to make sin, sickness, disease or death seem real, Good overrules it, and it makes them more unreal to us.
3. Good reverses every evil argument and effort and brings out the opposite good.

from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, pages 98 and 99

368 — WATCH lest you take human baggage with you, when you retreat into the Holiest of Holies. On page 23 of Science and Health (link) we read, “Jesus prayed; he with drew from the material senses to refresh his heart with brighter, with spiritual views.” One notable fact about this withdrawal was that Jesus was not striving to solve some human problem; he just wanted to refresh his heart.

Usually when we seek to withdraw from the material senses, we take human problems with us, so that they may be solved; but if we take a hint from the Master, we will retreat into the Holiest of Holies without human baggage. Then when our heart is refreshed with brighter views, we may return to our problems, and solve them more easily — or find them already solved.

Mrs. Eddy once said, “The Scientists should make error unreal to themselves, that they may make it unreal to others; and sometimes they can do more for others by going by themselves and meditating on spiritual realities.”

500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter

Luke 4:14
And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and there went out a fame of him through all the region round about.

Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy by Irving Tomlinson

Experience has taught me that the rules of Christian Science can be far more thoroughly and readily acquired by regularly settled and systematic workers, than by unsettled and spasmodic efforts. Genuine Christian Scientists are, or should be, the most systematic and law-abiding people on earth, because their religion demands implicit adherence to fixed rules, in the orderly demonstration thereof. Let some of these rules be here stated.

from Retrospection and Introspection, by Mary Baker Eddy, pages 87

“I cannot advise you regarding a Christian Science practitioner, but most earnestly request that you select one who knows Christian Science history.” — Mary Baker Eddy

“The form of animal magnetism that was dangerous to our Leader and was, and is, the real enemy of the Cause, is the human mind that uses students within the ranks to endeavor through conservatism and intellectuality to move our Leader out of her place.” — Gilbert Carpenter

Mrs. Eddy, on April 1 7, 1902, wrote to the artist who painted her picture and which is in the front of Dr. Lyman Powell’s biography (Mary Baker Eddy: A Life Size Portrait). “I can never express my full appreciation of the loving care which prompted the dear church in Baltimore to give a portrait of me to the world. I have often wondered, when thinking of the indifference that other churches have shown on this point, which does concern the history of Christian Science at present, and will in the future more than to-day.” (Mary Baker Eddy: Her Spiritual Footsteps, p.36, emphasis added) There are quite a few Christian Scientists today who think a displayed picture of Mrs. Eddy is deification. It certainly doesn’t sound as if Mrs. Eddy thought so. In fact, she tells us it is important and wonders why the other churches were indifferent to its importance. She saw the great danger, not of deification, but of indifference. Material mindedness, however, barely tolerates those who display pictures of Mrs. Eddy, scorns them as either deifiers or sentimentalists, and claims they are filled with emotion. Is this why many of our churches and Reading Rooms no longer have pictures of Mrs. Eddy? Our Leader tells us that pictures of herself will be important “in: the future more than to-day.” Yet far less interest is shown in her today than was shown in her time.

from the chapter “Gratitude or Indifference — Love or Deification” on page 313 of In Defense of Mary Baker Eddy, and the Remnant of Her Seed by Paul Smillie

In Recollections of Mary Baker Eddy (p.51, e.a.), by James Gilman, he relates the following conversation with our Leader, “She pointed to a low rocking chair without arms, old-fashioned mahogany … saying, ‘In that chair I wrote Science and Health.’ I said, ‘It is a very valuable chair.’ ‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘the world will cherish all these things in future time.'” Is the present considered future to that time and are we cherishing “all these things”?

from In Defense of Mary Baker Eddy, and the Remnant of Her Seed by Paul Smillie, page 314

Mrs. Eddy cherished that chair and its history and wanted the sacredness of it to be kept inviolate, and not allow mortal mind an opportunity to say that Christian Scientists worship her. We can all be alert enough not to minimize or reject our Leader nor give others the impression that we worship her. The tendency to put Mrs. Eddy out of the way because we don’t want others to think we deify her, is just as dangerous as deifying her. It is the lack of spiritual understanding that would either minimize her importance or worship her.

from In Defense of Mary Baker Eddy, and the Remnant of Her Seed by Paul Smillie, page 315

A worker in Mrs. Eddy’s home recounted the following story. Mr. Rathvon, an early worker, was in Mrs. Eddy’s home and came down the stairs one day, bowing before her, with tears in his eyes, proclaiming she was the Woman in the Apocalypse. Mrs. Eddy immediately said, “Get on your feet and don’t let me see you do that again!” She recognized his view of her was through emotion, not spiritual sense, and rebuked him just as Jesus had rebuked some of those who saw his place through emotion.

On another occasion, Victoria Sargent told Mrs. Eddy that her (Mrs. Sargent’s) pupils recognized her as the woman in the Apocalypse and Mrs. Eddy commented, “That is from above.” (Sketch p.12) Here are two statements that appear to be the same; one was rebuked, the other accepted. Why? Because one was deification through personal sense, or emotionalism, while the other was based in spiritual sense and was proper recognition. Both Jesus and Mrs. Eddy appreciated and commended a recognition of their place gained through spiritual sense, and both rebuked a recognition produced by personal sense.

from In Defense of Mary Baker Eddy, and the Remnant of Her Seed by Paul Smillie, pages 315 to 316

If the right thinker and worker’s servitude is duly valued, he is not thereby worshipped. One’s idol is by no means his servant, but his master. And they who love a good work or good workers are themselves workers who appreciate a life, and labor to awake the slumbering capability of man. And what the best thinker and worker has said and done, they are not far from saying and doing. As a rule the Adam-race are not apt to worship the pioneer of spiritual ideas, — but ofttimes to shun him as their tormentor. Only the good man loves the right thinker and worker, and cannot worship him, for that would destroy this man’s goodness.

from Message for 1900 by Mary Baker Eddy

Manual and the Mother Church

by Doris Grekel

Mrs. Eddy wrote of the Manual when it was first published: “Heaps upon heaps of praise confront me, and for what: That which said in my heart would never be needed,namely, laws of limitation for a Christian Scientist.” But she also said that the Manual was divinely inspired and would udo for the race what absolute doctrines destined for future generations might not accomplish.”

What is a manual? It is a guidebook, is it not? The dictionary definition reads a small book; a handbook. A handbook is a book of reference to be carried in the hand. If every Christian Scientist had carried his Manual in his hand and referred to it daily for guidance, could the situation confronting us today ever have developed? When a student in Mrs. Eddy’s home made the remark that God would raise up someone who would be faithful as John was at the cross, Mrs. Eddy responded: “How do you know? Look within to see who that one should be.” Is it not time that the individual Christian Scientist began looking to his responsibility, carrying his Manual in his hand, and learning the guidance therein?

Our leader foresaw what malicious mind would endeavor to do with her organization and laid intricate plans to meet the enemy’s attacks on every front. But her work can be likened to the true account of creation in the first chapter of Genesis, in that it is concise and has been almost buried under the mountain of conflicting accounts. Those who would find the open door she left for us need to study her writings and her history, and particularly her Manual for her Church.

The world has never seen a greater woman than Mary Baker Eddy nor a greater man than Jesus of Nazareth. Do you think it is happenstance that God’s two witnesses are excluded from practically all history books? The two individuals who have done more than all others for human progress are treated by the world as if they had never lived in our midst and existed not at all. It was because of evil’s intent to obliterate all her landmarks and keep the world in darkness that Mrs. Eddy included in the Manual uthe phrase, Mary Baker Eddy’s Church, The Mother Church, or The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Mass.’

There is much to learn about “Mary Baker Eddy’s Church.” For example: how many Scientists know that Mrs. Eddy never once set foot in the Mother Church Extension? Not only did she never enter it, but she made certain that that fact would be recorded for posterity by actions that were as unusual as Jesus’ washing of the disciples’ feet. They probably understood him not at all, but they did record the event for future generations to ponder.

In Mrs. Eddy’s day her church officials were well aware of the restrictions imposed upon them in the Manual and did all in their power to get her to change the by-laws.

It is recorded that her beloved student, Edward A. Kimball, once asked Mrs. Eddy what would happen to the Movement if she should pass on. Her reply was that it would degenerate into material prosperity. “He then asked what would happen if she ascended. She hesitated, before answering with a beatific smile, The Mother Church would be dissolved.’ Our concept of “Mary Baker Eddy’s Church” seems to depend upon our understanding of Mary Baker Eddy and whether we think that she died or know that she ascended. The lesson for wakening Christian Scientists today is not unlike that given by our Leader to Lewis Strang in 1902:

“When the Discoverer of Christian Science in this age must deal with sinning so-called Christian Scientists, those who know their Leader as she is must be awake to the delusions of malicious animal magnetism that would make Jerusalem a waste and desert place. Take up those transgressors in our midst who would undo the work of their Leader. … Waken to the need of this hour that those who would set aside the Manual of The Mother Church with its just By-laws see the sinfulness of their ways.”

To another helper in her home she said, *Remember what say. This Church Manual is God’s law as much so as the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. It is God’s law and will be acknowledged as law by law. Now remember what say.”

Christian Scientists can rejoice to see this day when students of Science and Health are turning to a study of the Manual and beginning the fulfillment of Mrs. Eddy’s prophecy: “Notwithstanding the sacrilegious moth of time, eternity awaits our Church Manual, which will maintain its rank as in the past, amid ministries aggressive and active, and will stand when those have passed to rest.”

Mrs. Eddy’s Church

by Ralph B. Spencer

When we study the life and accomplishments of Mary Baker Eddy, we eventually come to see that she did not trust the human mind. After her discovery of the divine Mind, in 1866, she continued to gain more and more spiritual growth, and to lean more and more on the divine Mind.

Within the last three years of her life, she wrote an important letter to her Board of Directors, and made several changes before she was satisfied. Then she released it, only to take it again, out of the hands of her assistant, Adam Dickey, and proceeded to write the following words across the top of the letter, “Remember that the socalled human mind is expected to increase in wisdom until it disappears and the divine Mind is seen to be the only Mind.” (Memoirs of Mary Baker Eddy, by Adam H. Dickey, C.S.D.)

When Mrs. Eddy was confronted with the persistent desire for a church by many of her followers, she resisted the pressure. She said there was no need for another church, or a creed, or a doctrine. It was up to her followers and other Christians to discover, embody and impart the Christ-spirit, and that each could do so,-by turning to the one Mind, as set forth in the Bible and Science and Health. When we study Mrs. Eddy’s Deed of Trust of 1892 and her Deed of Trust of 1898, it becomes obvious that she did not want her Christian Science Movement to fall into the hands of the human mind, nor into the hands of any personal leader, nor into the hands of any group or board.

Mrs. Eddy could easily have placed everything under her Board of Directors, but she refused to do s0. In establishing her Deed of Trust of 1898, she could easily have established it as a sub-trust, subordinate to the Trust of 1892, so that the Board of Directors would have been in complete authority, but she refused to do so.

Hence, did she desire her Mother Church to continue after her decease? Of course she did. Did she desire her Publishing Society to continue after her decease? Of course she did. Did she desire that the branch churches continue after her decease? Of course she did. Did she desire the Mother Church organization to continue? No, it is apparent that she deliberately left her Manual in such a way that the Mother Church organization would have to be dissolved, but not the Mother Church itself. The original Mother Church building would continue, the Extension would continue, the Board of Directors would continue, but the Board of Directors would simply be the governing body of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, Massachusetts. The Board of Trustees would continue as the governing Board of The Christian Science Publishing Society. Did Mrs. Eddy have any inkling as to her probable decease? Very definitely. On March 10, 1907 she was greatly disturbed over the Next Friends Suit, brought against her by an unscrupulous New York newspaper. She opened her Bible that morning to Isaiah 16:14:

“But now the Lord hath spoken, saying, within three years, as the years of an hireling, and the glory of Moab shall be contemned, with all that great multitude; and the remnant shall be very small and feeble.” She then said, “I am sure this will be fulfilled, but don’t tell anyone about it.” (Notes on the Course in Divinity, compiled by Gilbert C. Carpenter, Jr.)

Hence, Mrs. Eddy had over three years to put her affairs in order. Did she continue to revise her Mother Church Manual? She certainly did, right into the year 1910. Was she careless or confused in the way she left her Manual? Far from it. Then, why did she not make it plain, so that the human mind could follow specific instructions? For the same reason that she did not write Science and Health in simple terms that the human mind could understand. She wrote from inspiration, and most of Science and Health requires inspiration on the part of the reader to be understood. The Manual also was written from inspiration, with the same necessity for spiritual understanding.

If Mrs. Eddy had written simple specific instructions, Christian Scientists undoubtedly would have fallen for a perpetual human organization, possibly similar to that of the Catholic Church, which has a Mother Church, a tight human organization and an “infallible” and dictatorial head, over all.

This head is called Pope (derived from the Latin, papa or father), and was used at first in belittlement and derision by the bishops of the sixth century, who resisted any supreme head of the Church except for the Christ. Gradually, many of the bishops came to respect Bishop Gregory, in the sixth and seventh centuries, until eventually they were willing to address Bishop Gregory with respect, as Pope.

Thus the human mind was satisfied, and the divine Mind was largely excluded from the affairs of the Universal Church, commonly called the Catholic Church. Do Christian Scientists reàlly desire some form of Pope to guide them, or are they ready to turn to God for inspiration and guidance, either directly, or with the help of books or articles as auxiliaries?

To be sure, Christian Scientists might not, at first, feel the inspiration and unfoldment which they seek, but surely, with dedication and unselfing, “the inspired word” would begin to come through with its true enlightenment.

One almost has to believe that Mrs. Eddy clearly foresaw that there would be confusion, disagreements and possible lawsuits in connection with her Manual, but that eventually herdivinely-led idea of no single authority over the Movement would evolve in the minds of some of her followers, and that all branch churches would be completely independent, within the framework of her Manual, and that there would be no longer any teachers or lecturers because a decentralized and democratic form of local-church government would prevail, and each student would be challenged to find his God and the spiritual way of life, on his own. Practitioners would continue on the basis of performance, and possibly with the approval of the In this way, the entire Field would be free of centralized authority, and each student would feel the challenge to find his God and to gain the inspired teaching which lies latent in that great book of the age, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.

Evil has no reality. It is neither person, place, nor thing, but is simply a belief, an illusion of material sense.

from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 71

Who is telling mankind of the foe in ambush?

from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 571

An Allegory

by Doris Grekel

Once upon a time there was a handsome young prince who was the son of a great and glorious king. Now this king was exceedingly great and good, and he had the gift of eternal life. He wanted his son to grow up to rule with him, but to do that he must be as great and good as his father, so the king told his son the secret of eternal life: you may do anything you want freely with but one exception; if you touch the knowledge of good and evil, you will die.

A wicked hypnotist tried to usurp the king’s throne, but he could not begin to unseat the king. In fact, he could not even get anywhere near him, because the king’s great goodness repelled evil automatically as a magnet repels the wrong pole, and this surrounded him with an impenetrable armor of light. So the pretender started whispering to the young prince and his young wife.

Once he had their ear, the rest was easy. He told them that the prince was already as great as his father, and that a taste of the knowledge of good and evil would prove it. The young couple thought they might just examine it to see for themselves, but the minute they touched it they were in the power of the wicked one who was a master hypnotist. They began to see the suggestions he planted and thought they were real. Not only they, but their children after them became servants of this wicked usurper, and, under his enchantment, they all saw wickedness and sickness and evil and death which did not exist in all the king’s domain.

Now the king had a second son who saw what the usurper had done to his brethren, and he said to his father, “I will go to save our people.” This second prince came to the king’s children who were completely hypnotized and told them that the usurper was a liar and that all he said and did was a lie. He said to them, “Just believe my words and you will know the truth. The truth will break the trance and set you free.”
But the people were still hypnotized and under the power of the wicked one, so they took the king’s son and killed him. But this second son had not lost eternal life, because he had obeyed his Father and had not partaken of the knowledge of good and evil. So, even though they thought they had killed his body, he had the power to resurrect it. When he did this, the spell was broken, and the king’s children began to remember the everlasting kingdom of righteousness.

They began to believe again in eternal life and in the kingdom and power and glory of the king. And they began seeking to regain this lost kingdom. But all this time the usurper kept whispering to them, and they didn’t know it because he was invisible. He kept feeding them the knowledge of both good and evil, and, because he was invisible, they thought his suggestions were their own thoughts. So they went on seeing the things the hypnotist suggested to them, and because they thought these illusions were real, the glorious king and the everlasting kingdom seemed like a myth.

The truth seemed almost too good to believe, but they loved to tell the story. They told one another that the king’s son came that they might have life and have it more abundantly, even eternally, so they would no more see death. Then the ursurper whispered, “That is right, but that is not this life. That is another life in the hereafter. This life is mortal. So the king’s immortal children talked about eternal life, but they still believed they had to die before they could find it; and they talked about the king. but they still did not remember that they were his family.

Now the king’s youngest child was a beautiful daughter, and she said, “Father, let me go to teach our people the truth. Let me tell them again the great secret, that they may choose the tree of life and refuse to touch the knowledge of good and evil. will tell them who they are. will tell them about the usurper and his lies, and the hypnotic trance they have been in. will tell them what is illusion and what is real. And, Father, let me take them the sword of the kingdom.”

So the king’s daughter came to her brethren and said, “This is Life eternal. There is no other life some place else. This is my father’s kingdom. He will not come back to retake it, because he has never lost it. You have been hypnotized by a lie and have been seeing illusions. But bring you the great sword of the kingdom which is the Spirit of Truth. Take this weapon and keep it with you, always, for it will bring all things to your remembrance, and with it you can dispell all illusions. You need but touch its point to any appearance and instantly you will know whether it is real or illusion. And as you use this sword, you will begin to remember. You will remember that life is eternal and stop counting the number of times this planet circles its sun. You will remember who you are; you will remember that you are the royal family on this planet and the rightful heirs to the kingdom.”

This is where we come into the story. Does this sound like a fairy tale? It is, but it comes closer to world history than can be found in history books. When we touch history with the sword of truth, it is seen to be a recitation of the lies of the usurper to the throne of God together with stories of what hypnotized people have done. It is the story of the knowledge of good and evil, the belief of material life which begins with a lie and ends in death.

Nashua Man Healed

by Rollin K. Sherman from the September 28, 1899 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel

Former Well-Known Hotel Man Relates his Experience with Christian Science.

To the Editor of The Nashua Telegraph, Sir:— I greatly appreciate your kindness in allowing me space in the columns of the Telegraph to give the public the benefit of my marvelous healing of late, together with some general remarks on Christian Science.

My only motive in giving an account of my healing through Christian Science is this: I desire to show the suffering multitudes that the power of God through the understanding of Truth is demonstrated in our day as it was in the day of Jesus and his disciples, over sin, sickness, death, and every other trouble, and I would herald these glad tidings of great joy to the ends of the earth, that I may “comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God;” and who does not need comforting in the midst of these terrible ordeals of mortal life?

I propose at this point to give an unvarnished statement of my healing, which will corroborate the statements I have already made concerning Christian Science and other statements that I may make at the close of this article.

The people of Nashua know full well that I had been hobbling through its streets much of the time for two and a half years, a decrepit, old, physical wreck of mortal manhood, having been given up to die by my physician and my family, and the people were thinking and saying, “That man is not long for this world.” Grip, followed by acute bronchitis and terminating in nervous prostration lasting for over two years, were the claims upon me.

My physician, a kind-hearted gentleman, in his desire to alleviate my sufferings, prescribed a mild opiate (papine) when I was first taken sick, and this drug was administered to me from two to four times a day, nearly every day for the entire period of my sickness. The thoughts of the possibility of acquiring the opium habit were an unbearable torture at times that threw me into despair, and I cried to God in my agony to save me from such an awful doom and to heal my sickness; for I believed that the prayer of faith would save the sick; but for the want of the understanding of Christ, Truth, I could not touch the hem of his garment myself, nor could the ministers or others, who prayed with me so kindly, so tenderly, and so fervently. We all lacked the understanding of Truth to overcome sickness, and hence the “signs” which Jesus declared should follow them that believe—healing the sick, etc.—did not, could not, follow our belief; for it was belief without understanding, and the Bible says, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Our failure was simply in not knowing or understanding Truth.

In February, 1899, my wife and I went to Brockton, Mass., to stay a while with my daughter. While there my hopes were intermittent with no perceptible improvement in my condition, although I tried hard to exercise a cheerful, hopeful faith that I was gaining. I said to my wife the first day of last April (1899), “I feel that I am a physical wreck without one particle of soundness from the crown of my head to the sole of my feet.” My lungs seemed to be nearly gone, my stomach was in an awful condition as I thought, and I was mincing over a scanty diet, almost afraid to eat anything, and, indeed, many things seemed to throw me into diarrhea and distress me much. I was also suffering with a burning fever in my very bones from which I had suffered much of the time from my first attack of grip in 1896, and the fear of the morphine habit was also staring me full in the face.

At this juncture, when it seemed to me that I could not stand the strain any longer, when I was prepared to take Truth at any cost, God came to my rescue and offered me relief through Christian Science.

Three months earlier I would have died rather than enter into this “devilish delusion,” as I heard Christian Science called from a Christian pulpit by an evangelist two weeks before the time I refer to. But what was I to do? What could I do? I had been fighting death all alone—looking right into the grave almost, until the very tortures of hell seemed to be consuming my flesh. I was perfectly helpless myself; doctors had failed me; ministers could not help me; the church had no healing balm to offer me, and my wife and my daughter had lost faith, as they told me themselves. Thus I was standing all alone upon the very brink of the grave, “having no hope, and without God in the world.” Notwithstanding my mortal wretchedness, the third day of April I advised my granddaughter, who had been invited to attend a Christian Science meeting, to keep away from these deluded people, affirming that “Christian Science is the most gigantic error of the age,” and yet I could not have stated one principle of Christian Science; for I had no more understanding of it than all others who as unwittingly antagonize it to-day, as I had done.

The Christian Science Journal and the Sentinel fell into my hands the same day, and I began to read them, and continued reading them through the week, and hope sprang up as I read the wonderful cures of every conceivable type of disease all over the world, and as I caught the spirit of the various articles, brimful of faith in God, faith in Jesus Christ, faith in the Scriptures, all of which breathe the very atmosphere of purity, love, and heaven in every line. On Sunday morning, April 9, I began reading the Christian Science text-book, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” by Mary Baker G. Eddy. The very first sentence in the preface settled my mind as to the truth of that wonderful, God-inspired book. Hope and gladness came into all our hearts as we read and talked nothing else but Christian Science. I went to a Christian Science healer April 13 for treatment. She told me that it would be necessary to lay aside all the materia medica, including opiates, which I was ready to do; as I had not taken medicine for a long time.

At my first visit she told me to read the ninety-first Psalm. After four treatments, two present and two absent, she discharged me with the remark that I needed no treatment, as I was getting the needed help in reading Science and Health, and that if I continued reading that book with understanding as I had done, I would be healed. She further remarked that she never saw or heard of one who took Christian Science so rapidly and so understandingly as I was doing. Ah, yes; I was a dying man fleeing from death and the grave crying, “Life, life, eternal life.”

I continued reading Science and Health, and I finished reading it for the first time Sunday, April 30, in just three weeks. As I closed the book and laid it down, my thoughts, which had been almost wholly absorbed in Christian Science for four weeks, naturally turned back to my body again, and to my utter astonishment I found myself feeling perfectly well, and in my joy I exclaimed, “Why, I am perfectly healed!” The fever and pain had entirely disappeared, and I exclaimed again with increased astonishment, “I have scarcely thought of my stomach or any other physical organ, for four weeks, and I have been eating everything set before me, taking no thought for my life, what I should eat, without the least bad effect therefrom!”

Every organ in my body seemed perfectly sound, and, indeed, had I never studied physiology, I should not have believed that I had any physical organs, as I had no mortal sense of them whatever. I had a little struggle for two or three days after I left off taking papine; but on my awakening to the consciousness of health I found it had utterly disappeared, together with the whole brood of devils (evils) which had held high carnival over my poor, mortal mind and body for over two years, and none of these imps of hell have ever returned to torment me to this day (September 15). This wonderful result was effected by simply reading Science and Health after I had received the four treatments mentioned. In my haste for deliverance, I went through the book with a rush; but I caught a glimpse of the truth that God is the only Life, Substance, and Mind.

Two or three days later my daughter said to me, as I was frisking about like a young man, “Father, I never saw such a wonderful change in a person in my life as has taken place in you in so short a time. You are no more the man you were a month ago than darkness is like light!”

Tell me, do you, oh mortal man, that “This is the work of the devil (evil) ?” That this is “Satan himself transformed into an angel of light?” the “profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so-called” ? Where, then, shall we look for the work of God? Christian Science is bringing mortals out of darkness into spiritual light, love, health, and happiness, all over the earth to-day, far beyond any other agency known. Then is not this cry against Christian Science, the pharisaical spirit of the first century re-echoed in this nineteenth century which would “crucify . . . the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame”? It sounds so much like the voice coming up from the pit as in the days of the incarnation of the Son of God in the flesh, crying, “Crucify him ! crucify him!”

My brethren, would it not be well for us to understand Christian Science better before we write, preach, and talk against it? Would it not be wise in us to heed Dr. Gamaliel’s advice to his brethren, to “refrain from these men; let them alone: . . . lest haply ye [too] be found even to fight against God?”

I wish to state in this connection, parenthetically, that I have read all of Mrs. Eddy’s works, eleven books and booklets all told, I think, and I have read Science and Health three times by course, and some parts of it several times, making a close study of it from April 9 to the present time, and I have not read a sentence in any of these works that has raised a doubt in my mind that it was Scriptural and absolutely true.

I will add, as I draw this article to a close, that if further evidence is called for to establish my statement, which seems almost incredible to some, my wife and others will corroborate every word I have written concerning my healing, and they will add that I have not overdrawn the facts in my statements, in the least. Finally, if my statements are true, if this marvelous healing, and this wonderful spiritual uplift were caused by Christian Science, then this fact demonstrates the truth that the Christianity of Jesus and Christian Science are one, for they are based upon the same Principle, and they are demonstrated by the same rule, the rule of ever-present, omnipotent Love.