It is urged, however, that Mrs. Eddy's teachings have been demonstrated to be true by the remarkable cures they have effected. I need not question these cures. I hope all of them are genuine. I love humanity too well to wish that its ills were not cured at all rather than that they should be cured by Christian Science. But when every claim is conceded, all that will be proved is that Christian Science has cured some sick people. Of course it has. I hope the Christian Scientists will be equally generous to admit that during the past thousands of years cures have been effected also by other agencies. Mohammedanism has cured the sick; Catholic saints have cured the sick; holy places have performed cures—else why do multitudes go on pilgrimages to shrines? Patent medicines have helped the sick, otherwise the inventors and vendors of them could not have made such big fortunes; and the least tolerant Christian Scientist must admit that even physicians occasionally succeed in curing the sick. Evidently, then, Mrs. Eddy is not the only healer; which, if admitted, will prove that she has not performed any cures with her "ism" which others have not performed without it. If it be said that other cures are cures only in name, the same is said by unbelievers of Christian Science cures. One objection balances the other. Christian Science would be unique if it never failed to cure. But as it fails in some cases from one cause or another, and as it limits its practice to complaints which do not require a knowledge of surgery, and, again, as it has never accomplished what the other agencies have failed to accomplish—restoring a lost limb, for instance—it follows without the possibility of contradiction that it is at its best no more than any other human agency.

At a Sunday morning meeting in San Francisco, as the audience was leaving, a cripple in her invalid's chair was being wheeled out of the building. Stepping up to one of the ushers who seemed to possess considerable authority, I asked why the cripple had been brought to the Christian Science meeting. "To be healed, of course," was the unhesitating reply. But as she was being wheeled out in the same condition as she was in when wheeled into the meeting, would it not follow, I asked, that she was not cured? Had the occasion permitted, the Christian Science usher would have argued that one or two treatments are not always enough to effect a cure. Admitted. But if "Divine" science must have more than one chance to hit the mark, how does it differ from human science? To prove its Divine origin, Christian Science must meet the following conditions: First, it must cure diseases which all other agencies have pronounced incurable; second, it must never fail to cure; third, it must prove itself the only power that can cure. Not one of these conditions has been met by Christian Science. It has failed to cure many; it has not cured the incurables; and other agencies have cured at least as many patients as has Christian Science. In what respect, then, is Mrs. Eddy's doctrine the absolute or the only truth?