Page:The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany.djvu/120

92 town and city of the United States. Of course the new idea will never have determined its real position in the doctrines of the world until it has stood the test of time. But its beginning has been impressive, and that large numbers of intelligent men and women should be converted to it makes it appear that Science cannot be brushed aside by ridicule alone.

The prodigious convention of Christian Scientists in Boston is a portent worthy of perhaps even more interest than it has evoked in that city, where a new temple to Isis and Osiris would be hardly more than a day's wonder. With the swift growth of the new faith the public has in a general way been familiar; it is but a few years ago that the astonishing revelation was made that since 1890 its following had increased from an insignificant number to hundreds of thousands, a rate at which every other sect in the country would soon be left behind. But mere statistics give a feeble impression in comparison with so huge and concrete a demonstration as the dedication of this vast temple. The statistics have been ridiculed by the hostile as mere guesswork, but one cannot sneer away the two-million-dollar stone edifice or the thirty thousand worshippers who entered its portals Sunday.

There are two things to be said in favor of Christian Science. Its growth has been wonderfully rapid, and due apparently to nothing save the desire in the human heart for some such comfort as it promises. Christian Scientists,