Page:The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany.djvu/118

90 many thousands during her lifetime; that hundreds of great buildings should be filled at every meeting Sundays or on week-days with devout worshippers, wooed by no eloquence of orator or magnetic ritual, — all these things are new, utterly new, in the history of religious expression.

Unaccountable? Hardly so. Whatever else it is, this faith is real and is given very real tests. Thousands upon thousands believe that it has cured them of diseases many and diverse. All the passionate love for life with which nature endows the children of men, grips hold of their faith and insures fidelity in pain or death for self or dear ones. But, while health-seeking is the door to this gospel for many, it is not the only source of appeal. A faith which teaches that hate is atheism, that discord is poisonous, that gloom is sin, has a mission that can be readily grasped by sick or well.

The world is enormously richer for this reincarnation of the old, old gospel of “on earth peace, good will toward men.”

The dedication of The Mother Church of Christian Science at Boston, with its paid-up cost of two million dollars and its tremendous outpouring of eager communicants from all over the civilized world, is an event of impressiveness and momentous significance. The historic place of Mrs. Eddy as the Founder of a great denomination can no longer be questioned, and the sources of her power and following can be readily apprehended. Prominent among these is the denomination's peculiar department of healing, the efficacy of which to some extent is established