Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 35.djvu/237

 demonstrated or proved by the annihilation of the alleged unreality. The affirmation of the absolute supremacy of Mind is not stated as a theory, but is accompanied by plain rules, comprehensible to any fair intelligence, by which this supremacy can be verified in an endless progression. This authority over the supposed conditions of matter was first completely demonstrated by Jesus. It is the Science of the life of Jesus, in its supremacy over matter and its beliefs of sin and sickness, that is set forth in “Science and Health.”

No one knows, or can learn, any more of this Science than he has demonstrated—that is, lived. The students of natural science will not find unreasonable the declaration of an humble beginner in this Science, that no one is entitled to sit as a judge on it who has not either gone through with the demonstrations as set forth by its Founder, according to her directions, or until he can show by experience that when the rules of the Science are followed the results are not invariable.

This position was forcibly stated in a review of it that appeared the year following the publication of “Science and Health,” as follows: “Why do you assail her for individual opinions and beliefs? That is not the ground she occupies. She declares that what she states is not her own. It is Science left subject to proof, based upon Principle, governed by given rules, the demonstration whereof she leaves for you. It is for you to decide whether it is Science or not: now who can answer that question who doesn't understand Science?”

Enough has been said to show that healing in Christian Science is very different from the fanciful representation given of it by the writer in the April “Monthly.” Physical healing is a necessary and useful incident, not a factor, in the scheme of Christian Science. The operation of the healing power is as clearly defined and as tangible in consciousness, just as amenable to law—vastly more so to one reasonably well instructed—as are the phenomena involved in the operation of natural law on the plane of visible effects.

The writer in the April “Monthly” could not tell its readers what Christian Science is, precisely because it is Science, and can not be learned or picked up by curiously turning over the leaves of “Science and Health,” from odd paragraphs in the daily papers, or from the loose gossip that circulates in the lower atmosphere of human thought.

For the ungenerous and unworthy statements reflecting on the personal character and motives of the founder of Christian Science, these words of hers from the great text-book of Science shall make the only answer:

“In founding this system of ethics and medicine I have labored