e hands of a small and very competent Trust, and there
are results.

Therein lies the promise that this monopoly is going to extend its
commerce wide in the earth. I think that if the business were conducted
in the loose and disconnected fashion customary with such things, it
would achieve but little more than the modest prosperity usually secured
by unorganized great moral and commercial ventures; but I believe that
so long as this one remains compactly organized and closely concentrated
in a Trust, the spread of its dominion will continue.

CHAPTER IX

Four years ago I wrote the preceding chapters. I was assured by the wise
that Christian Science was a fleeting craze and would soon perish. This
prompt and all-competent stripe of prophet is always to be had in the
market at ground-floor rates. He does not stop to load, or consider, or
take aim, but lets fly just as he stands. Facts are nothing to him, he
has no use for such things; he works wholly by inspiration. And so, when
he is asked why he considers a new movement a passing fad and quickly
perishable, he finds himself unprepared with a reason and is more or
less embarrassed. For a moment. Only for a moment. Then he waylays the
first spectre of a reason that goes flitting through the desert places
of his mind, and is at once serene again and ready for conflict. Serene
and confident. Yet he should not be so, since he has had no chance
to examine his catch, and cannot know whether it is going to help his
contention or damage it.

The impromptu reason furnished by the early prophets of whom I have
spoken was this:

"There is nothing to Christian Science; there is nothing about it
that appeals to the intellect; its market will be restricted to the
unintelligent, the mentally inferior, the people who do not think."

They called that a reason why the cult would not flourish and endure. It
seems the equivalent of saying:

"There is no money in tinware; there is nothing about it that appeals to
the rich; its market will be restricted to the poor."

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 intell