It is too early to predict where this movement will go, and how greatly it will affect the well-established methods.  That it has produced a sensation in religious circles, and called forth the implements of theological warfare, is very well known.  While it has done this, it may, on the other hand, have brought a benefit.  Ere this many a new project in religious belief has stirred up feeling, but as time has gone on, compromises have been welcomed.

The erection of this temple will doubtless help on the growth of its principles.  Pilgrims from everywhere will go there in search of truth, and some may be satisfied and some will not.  Christian Science cannot absorb the world’s thought.  It may get the share of attention it deserves, but it can only aspire to take its place alongside other great demonstrations of religious belief which have done something good for the sake of humanity.

Wonders will never cease.  Here is a church whose treasurer has to send out word that no sums except those already subscribed can be received!  The Christian Scientists have a faith of the mustard-seed variety.  What a pity some of our practical Christian folk have not a faith approximate to that of these “impractical” Christian Scientists.

* * * * *

[Jackson Patriot, Jackson, Mich., January 20, 1895]

[Extract]

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

The erection of a massive temple in Boston by Christian Scientists, at a cost of over two hundred thousand dollars, love-offerings of the disciples of Mary Baker Eddy, reviver of the ancient faith and author of the textbook from which, with the New Testament at the foundation, believers receive light, health, and strength, is evidence of the rapid growth of the new movement.  We call it new.  It is not.  The name Christian Science alone is new.  At the beginning of Christianity it was taught and practised by Jesus and his disciples.  The Master was the great healer.  But the wave of materialism and bigotry that swept over the world for fifteen centuries, covering it with the blackness of the Dark Ages, nearly obliterated all vital belief in his teachings.  The Bible was a sealed book.  Recently a revived belief in what he taught is manifest, and Christian Science is one result.  No new doctrine is proclaimed, but there is the fresh development of a Principle that was put into practice by the Founder of Christianity nineteen hundred years ago, though practised in other countries at an earlier date.  “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done:  and there is no new thing under the sun.”