for principle, not for personality. Others can not take my place,
even if willing to do so. I therefore remain at my post, working
for the generations to come, never looking for a present
reward.”
“I have clung to Truth most closely in the hour of its trial. The weapons of mortal selfishness, envy, ambition, and hatred that have opposed, have often pierced the human heart, but ‘none of these things have moved me.’ . . . Twenty-two years I have planted and watered ‘in labor and travail, working day and night.’ ”
“Hoping all things, enduring all things—in the spirit of Christ's charity—ready to bless them that curse me, glad to bear consolation to the sorrowing and healing to the sick, I commit these pages to honest seekers for Truth in this age and to posterity.”
As to the reflections of the same character on the tens of thousands of devoted students who are laboring to spread the glad tidings she has brought, to alleviate and, finally, to destroy the supposed ills of humanity—real to sense, but not to Truth—they are left to the judgment of those who have followed these few words, so unworthy of their great theme.
It is proper to refer to the declaration of the signs of “decadence” of Christian Science. Its founder began in 1867 with a single student. Since that time she has taught nearly four thousand, the number increasing every year—not to speak of the pressure for admission to her classes of hundreds she is obliged every year to refuse. “Science and Health” had an insignificant sale during the years following its publication in 1875. But this, too, has steadily increased yearly, until it has reached a sale of forty thousand copies. A large proportion of the students from the classes of its author have become healers and teachers, so that, while for obvious reasons no exact statistics of their number can be given, it is certain that some hundreds of thousands are to-day “in” Science—that is, living, according to their several understandings, the “Life that is Spirit.” Among those who receive “Science and Health” as a revelation of divine Truth are many of the most gifted and honored men and women not only in this country but in England.
Christian Science is no “craze.” The readers of “The Popular Science Monthly” will judge for themselves whether the words of its founder are words of soberness or of delusion. She says: “I have never supposed this century would present the full fruits of Christian Science, or that sin, sickness, and death would not continue for centuries to come; but this I do aver, that, as a result of my teaching, old age and decrepitude will not come so soon—that already health is restored and longevity increased by
