Article March 15, 1913 Issue

In a recent issue a correspondent asks the question, What...

Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch

In a recent issue a correspondent asks the question, What is Christian Science? and proceeds to put certain interrogatories. The intent of the article seems to be to sustain a public speaker in his entirely uncalled-for attack upon a denominational teaching which he has never investigated with the "inquiring mind" that is open to new and higher truths of God.

Your correspondent demands to know what Christian Science is and what it teaches. Briefly, it is the scientific knowledge that obedience to God's commandments gives man a surprising dominion over sickness as well as over sin. With Christian Scientists religion is not an emotion or an impulse; it is not a theory or a superstition; it is the joyful knowing that one can avoid sickness and conquer pain by living a Christian life—not believing it, theoretically, but living it actually. When Christian Scientists forget to live that life, they become sick, just as other people do under similar circumstances; but they know what ails them, and if consistent know that a knowledge of God is the remedy, and that correct living is the application of that remedy.

The correspondent asks further: Does Christian Science teach that pain is only a delusion and death a fake? The best possible answer to this question is a quotation from the text-book of Christian Science, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," in which Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 460): "Sickness is neither imaginary nor unreal,—that is, to the frightened, false sense of the patient. Sickness is more than fancy; it is solid conviction. It is therefore to be dealt with through right apprehension of the truth of being." It is the knowledge that disturbed physical conditions can be overcome by the immediate and persisten application of spiritual means which constitutes a Christian Scientist, not the ignoring of those conditions, as many people think.

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