Article June 28, 1913 Issue

Writing in the Tenterden Parish Magazine, the Vicar of...

Frederick Dixon—Ashford, England.

Kentish Express

Writing in the Tenterden Parish Magazine, the Vicar of Tenterden says: "It was with the deepest regret that I was compelled to perform a most painful task on Sunday morning, April 20. In fulfilment of my ordination vow, 'to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God's word,' I felt it to be my duty to warn my people against certain parishioners who had been secretly disseminating the doctrines of the false prophet of America, Mrs. Eddy."

The vicar begins by saying that he prefers to call Christian Science "Eddyism." Chacun a son goût. We have Lutheranism and Calvinism in the Christian church, and Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, and Mohammedanism out of it, to say nothing of Platonism, Berkeleianism, and a score of other religions and philosophies, so that historically Mrs. Eddy would be in very good company. At the same time, Mrs. Eddy's teaching is known as Christian Science all over the world, so that the vicar's effort is a little late and a little feeble. If it is simply a question of being rude, that, of course, is another thing; it is always so easy as to be never worth while. He then goes on to quote against Christian Science all the most disagreeable lines in the poets he can apparently call to mind at the moment. It is a simple relaxation, especially if you have a dictionary of quotations by you; but reading this week's Parish Magazine, one is inevitably reminded of the inimitable scene in the inn on the Wretford road, when the bishop, with imperturbable bonhomie and gravity, remarked to the highwayman, "Of scurril terms you have a most remarkable empire."

Next, he goes on to make almost as many statements, without troubling about the proof, as if he were Stephen Paget himself. He endorses the criticism that Mrs. Eddy's statement, that pain and death are not real, "comes from hell." Personally, I thought Mrs. Eddy's authority was the Bible in such declarations as "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." The vicar does not explain how, if death is real, that is true, you are going to destroy truth. Jesus of Nazareth said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free," free from death and pain, surely. A great churchman and a great scholar, Bishop Westcott of Durham, commenting on this passage, writes: "The freedom of the individual is perfect conformity to the absolute, to that which is. Intellectually, this conformity is knowledge of the truth; morally, obedience to the divine law." Mrs. Eddy uses real in just this sense, that is, as the creation of God, spiritual and indestructible. She never said that pain and death were not, relatively speaking, facts to the human consciousness; she did deny that absolutely, that is spiritually, they were facts, and so does the Bible. "It is entirely competent," Mr. Froude writes, for any one "to define the terms which he intends to use just as he pleases." This does not appear to have occurred to the vicar. He apparently thinks that it is open to any critic to fit another person's conclusions on to his own definitions, for the express purpose of reaching a reductio ad absurdum. It makes argument very easy until you are found out.

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