feel disease only by reason of our belief in it: then shall matter remain no longer to blind us to Spirit, and clog the wheels of progress. We spread our wings in vain when we attempt to mount above error by speculative views of Truth.
Love is the Principle of divine Science; and Love is not learned of the material senses, nor gained by a culpable attempt to seem what we have not lifted ourselves to be, namely, a Christian. In love for man, we gain a true sense of Love as God; and in no other way can we reach this spiritual sense, and rise — and still rise — to things most essential and divine. What hinders man's progress is his vain conceit, the Phariseeism of the times, also his effort to steal from others and avoid hard work; errors which can never find a place in Science. Empirical knowledge is worse than useless: it never has advanced man a single step in the scale of being.
That one should have ventured on such unfamiliar ground, and, self-forgetful, should have gone on to establish this mighty system of metaphysical healing, called Christian Science, against such odds, — even the entire current of mortality, — is matter of grave wonderment to profound thinkers. That, in addition to this, she has made some progress, has seen far into the spiritual facts of being which constitute physical and mental perfection, in the midst of an age so sunken in sin and sensuality, seems to them still more inconceivable.
In this new departure of metaphysics, God is regarded more as absolute, supreme; and Christ is clad with a richer illumination as our Saviour from sickness, sin, and death. God's fatherliness as Life, Truth, and Love, makes His sovereignty glorious.
