Article October 18, 1913 Issue

The writer in a recent issue who is willing to personify...

Paul Stark Seeley—Portland, Ore.

The Telegram

The writer in a recent issue who is willing to personify "Common Sense" has a quite incorrect view of Christian Science, as evidenced by several of his statements. Let me say first, that it is no part of Christian Science practise to intimate to a patient the reality of health by stating to him that "there is no sickness, sin, or death." From the standpoint of Christian Science such a statement would be like telling the schoolchild that two times two are not five, and leaving him in bewilderment to guess the reason why. What the patient is told by the practitioner and what he will learn to understand from the study of Christian Science, is that the basis of its healing work is the demonstrable, spiritual fact that there is but one God, who is infinite good, and that man made in His likeness expresses in reality His divine nature, perfect and harmonious. Evil, sin, and disease, therefore, cannot be of God, who is good only, and being without God must be unreal, existing only in belief and meeting destruction in proportion as man perceives the facts of spiritual existence, or, in other words, learns the truth of being. Thus the promise of Jesus is fulfilled, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free," that is, free from the bondage of every evil belief.

The critic states that because a practitioner sits in the same room with the patient, that is a "suggestion" that something is being done for him. Perhaps he does not know that fully as many cases are being healed by Christian Science practitioners when the patient is absent, as otherwise.

In insisting on will-power as of divine origin, the writer states that "God works through men and women of willpower," and yet Christ Jesus, the greatest exemplar of scientific living that the world has ever known, said at a moment when his understanding of God was being put to its severest test, "Not my will, but thine, be done," meaning thereby that man should express in thought, purpose, and desire only that which is of God. Emerson says truly, "God will not make Himself manifest through cowards," but the courage that He requires is born not of human ignorance, but of divine understanding. As one comes to realize that his true consciousness is of God, he will not lose, but gain in those qualities of true courage and steadfastness which your correspondent seems to believe depend upon the human will. He will be courageous in the right, because he knows that he has laid hold of the truth that is eternal; steadfast, because he realizes that no power can vary the operation of divine law. His strength will be divine strength and his wisdom divine wisdom, transcending and eclipsing the human will with spiritual understanding.

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