It is like bringing forward the best reason in the world why Christian
Science should flourish and live, and then blandly offering it as a
reason why it should sicken and die.

That reason was furnished me by the complacent and unfrightened prophets
four years ago, and it has been furnished me again to-day. If
conversions to new religions or to old ones were in any considerable
degree achieved through the intellect, the aforesaid reason would be
sound and sufficient, no doubt; the inquirer into Christian Science might
go away unconvinced and unconverted. But we all know that conversions
are seldom made in that way; that such a thing as a serious and
painstaking and fairly competent inquiry into the claims of a religion or
of a political dogma is a rare occurrence; and that the vast mass of men
and women are far from being capable of making such an examination. They
are not capable, for the reason that their minds, howsoever good they may
be, are not trained for such examinations. The mind not trained for that
work is no more competent to do it than are lawyers and farmers competent
to make successful clothes without learning the tailor's trade. There
are seventy-five million men and women among us who do not know how to
cut out and make a dress-suit, and they would not think of trying; yet
they all think they can competently think out a political or religious
scheme without any apprenticeship to the business, and many of them
believe they have actually worked that miracle. But, indeed, the truth
is, almost all the men and women of our nation or of any other get their
religion and their politics where they get their astronomy--entirely at
second hand. Being untrained, they are no more able to intelligently
examine a dogma or a policy than they are to calculate an eclipse.

Men are usually competent thinkers along the lines of their specialized