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It is a religion of this world. Jesus was a Man of Sorrows but Mary Baker Eddy was a Daughter of Joy.

And as the universal good sense of mankind holds that the best preparation for a life to come, if there is one, is to make the best of this, Christian Science is meeting with a fast-growing popular acceptance.

The decline of the old orthodoxy is owing to its clinging to the fallacy that the world’s work is base, and Nature is a trickster luring us to our doom. Mrs. Eddy reconciled the old idea with the new and made it mentally palatable. And this is the reason why Christian Science is going to sweep the earth and in twenty years will have but one competitor, the Roman Catholic faith.

Orthodoxy, blind, blundering, stubborn, senile, is tottering–the undertaker is at the door. Indeed, the old idea of our orthodox friends that they were preparing to die, was literally true.

The undertaker’s name and business address attached to the front of many a city church is a sign too subtle to overlook. Not only was the undertaker a partner of the priest, but he is now foreclosing his claim. Christian Science is not final. After it has lived its day, another religion will follow, and that is the Religion of Commonsense, the esoteric religion which Mrs. Eddy herself lived and practised.

As for her believers, she gave them the religion of a Book–two Books, the Bible and “Science and Health.” They want form and ritual and temples.

She gave them these things, just as doctors give sweetened water to people who still demand medicine; and as if to supply the zealous converts, just out of orthodoxy, their fill of ecclesiastic husks, she built fine churches–churches rivaling the far-famed San Salute of Venice. Let them have their wish! Paganism is in their blood–they are even trying to worship her!

Let them go on and eventually they will pray not in temples nor on this or that mountain, but in spirit and in truth, just as did Mrs. Eddy, one of the world’s most successful women.

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Christian Science is orthodox Christianity, minus medical fetish and the fear that a belief in sin, sickness, death and eternal punishment naturally lends, plus the joy of a natural, healthy, human life. The so-called rational Christian sects preserve their Devil in the form of a Doctor, and Hell in the shape of a Hospital.

My hope and expectation is that Christian Science will become a Rational Religion instead of a one-man institution, or a religion of authority, such as it now is. Its superstitious features have doubtless been strong factors in its rapid growth–serving as stays or stocks to aid in the launching.

But now, the sooner the ship floats free the better. Christian Scientists, being men and women, can not continue to grow if fettered with an Index Expurgatorius and mandatory edicts and encyclicals. That which binds and manacles must go–the good will remain.

Christian Science brings good news, and good news is always curative. Mrs. Eddy animated her patients with a new thought–the thought of harmony, the denial of disease, and the affirmation that God is good and life is beautiful. The animation thus produced is in itself the most powerful healing principle known to science. Life is born of love. Joy is a prophylactic. Christian Science comes to the “student” as a great flood of light. His circulation becomes normal, his muscles relax, the nerves rest, digestion acts, elimination takes place–and the person is well.

Fear has congested the organs–love, hope and faith place them in an attitude so Nature plays through them. The patient is healed. In it there is neither mystery nor miracle. It is all very simple.

Let us rid ourselves of a belief in the strange and occult! The Christian Science organization is an expediency. It is an intellectual crutch. The book is a necessity. It is a scaffolding. Yet he who mistakes the scaffolding for the edifice is a specialist in scaffolding.