Page:The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany.djvu/127

Rh the Boston Times, comments, it is but one of the marvellous, great, and really good things that this sect is doing. It says: “A faith which is able to raise its believers above the suffering of petty ills; a religion that makes the merry heart that doeth good like a medicine, not a necessity, but a pleasure and an essential; a cult able to promote its faith with so great an aggregation of good and beneficial works, is welcomed within our midst and bidden Godspeed.”

Christian Scientists are a remarkably optimistic body of people, and it must be said in their behalf that they are enthusiasts whenever their form of religion is concerned. They have recently built a splendid cathedral in Boston, seating five thousand people, at a cost of two million dollars, and when it was dedicated there was not a cent of indebtedness left. Thirty thousand of the faith, coming from all parts of the world, attended the dedicatory exercises, and the press reports state that the contribution baskets when passed around were literally stuffed and jammed with money.

Less than a generation ago there was not a Christian Science church in the land. To-day there are hundreds of such churches. The denomination has grown with a rapidity that is startling, and the end is not yet.

Facts and figures are stubborn things, and ignore them as we may their existence points out their meaning and leaves no choice but the acceptance of them at their face value. The recent dedication of a Christian Science