Page:Miscellaneous Writings.djvu/55

Rh they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.”

Do you believe his words? I do, and that his promise is perpetual. Had it been applicable only to his immediate disciples, the pronoun would be you, not them. The purpose of his life-work touches universal humanity. At another time he prayed, not for the twelve only, but “for them also which shall believe on me through their word.”

The Christ-healing was practised even before the Christian era; “the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” There is, however, no analogy between Christian Science and spiritualism, or between it and any speculative theory.

In 1867, I taught the first student in Christian Science. Since that date I have known of but fourteen deaths in the ranks of my about five thousand students. The census since 1875 (the date of the first publication of my work, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures”) shows that longevity has increased. Daily letters inform me that a perusal of my volume is healing the writers of chronic and acute diseases that had defied medical skill.

Surely the people of the Occident know that esoteric magic and Oriental barbarisms will neither flavor Christianity nor advance health and length of days.

Miracles are no infraction of God's laws; on the contrary, they fulfil His laws; for they are the signs following Christianity, whereby matter is proven powerless and subordinate to Mind, Christians, like students in mathematics, should be working up to those higher rules of Life which Jesus taught and proved. Do we