ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



ing bush, saw him with the eyes of early man whose 

 divinities were clothed in the extraordinary, the 

 fearful, or the terrible; we see him in the meanest 

 weed that grows, and hear him in the gentle mur- 

 mur of our own heart's blood. The language of de- 

 votion and religious conviction is only the language 

 of soberness and truth written large and aflame 

 with emotion. 



Man goes away from home searching for the gods 

 he carries with him always. Man can know and feel 

 and love only man. There is a deal of sound psy- 

 chology in the new religion called Christian Science 

 — in that part which emphasizes the power of the 

 mind over the body, and the fact that the world is 

 largely what we make it, that evil is only the shadow 

 of good — old truths reburnished. This helps us to 

 understand the hold it has taken upon such a large 

 number of admirable persons. Good and evil are 

 relative terms, but evil is only the shadow of good. 

 Disease is a reality, but not in the same sense that 

 health is a reality. Positive and negative electricity 

 are both facts, but positive and negative good be- 

 long to a different order. Christian Science will not 

 keep the distemper out of the house if the sewer-gas 

 gets in; inoculation will do more to prevent typhoid 

 and diphtheria than "declaring the truth" or say- 

 ing your prayers or counting your beads. In its 

 therapeutical value experimental science is the only 

 safe guide in dealing with human corporal ailments. 



114 



