"No, I can't remember any such passages," admitted Doctor Colfax.
"W-well, He never s-said anything of the kind," put in Kate. "I don't know much, but I know that!"
"What did He say, Carolina?" asked St. Quentin. "Do you remember the exact words?"
"Yes, I do. In one place He said: 'He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also. And greater works than these shall he do because I go unto my father.' And at another time He said: 'Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils. Freely ye have received. Freely give.' Now when did the time limit to those commands end?"
"Oh, nonsense, Carolina!" said Mrs. Howard, with the amused toleration of the already saved. "How can you bring up such absurd speculations? All those questions have been settled for us by the heads of the Churches years and years before we were born."
"They were settled, dear Mrs. Howard, for all who choose to accept such decisions, but how about those of us who have questioned all our lives and never found an answer which satisfied? I can remember, as a little girl in Paris, I used to come home from the convent and ply my father with this very question: 'Why can't priests and preachers heal in these days the way Jesus commanded?'"
"Well, does Mrs. Eddy have the nerve to assert that she rediscovered the way to perform Christ's miracles?" asked Doctor Colfax.
"Mrs. Eddy asserts that in 1866 she discovered the Christ Science, or the power of healing disease as Jesus healed it, by a mental process which is so simple that to all Christian Scientists Christ's so-called miracles are not miracles at all, but as simple and natural as any other mental phenomenon which has become common by reason of its frequency."
"That sounds like sacrilege," said St. Quentin.
"It sounds like tommy-rot!" said Kate.