Editorial February 11, 1922 Issue

A Full Salvation

Albert F. Gilmore

Christian Science as revealed by Mary Baker Eddy provides mankind with full, complete, present-day salvation from all that is unlike God, that is, from all that is unlike good; and it proves its practical utility by its works. For all who will obediently follow its teachings in letter and spirit, it is the way to health, harmony, holiness, heaven. It is that understanding of God and His Christ which constitutes life eternal. It is the fulfillment of the promises of the prophets and seers of olden time as to the office of the Christ, and the amplification of the teachings of Christ Jesus in their spiritual import. It provides release from false belief, dissolving every bond that would enslave and limit man's right activities. Through its ministrations the sick are healed, the sinning regenerated, the sorrowing comforted, and the blind made to see. It is the gospel of glad tidings which, preached to the poor,—in spiritual sense,—destroys belief in lack, revealing the infinite bounty that belongs to every child of God. It is the "full salvation from sin, sickness, and death" which, on page 39 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy declares Christ Jesus wrought.

When Lambrose, the eminent Italian scientist of the last century, declared mortal man by nature to be the enemy of innovation, he touched upon a quality of human thought with which every Christian Scientist must deal. The mortal or human sense which conceives life to be inherent in and dependent upon matter, of a necessity partakes of material conditions constituting its own subjective state, and has nothing in common with the spiritual quality which characterizes the real man. In consequence, from its very nature, this sense resists that which if admitted into consciousness would destroy it through reducing it to its native state of nothingness. "That which is born of the Spirit" can have no traffic whatever with "that which is born of the flesh," for they are opposites, the one partaking exclusively of reality, the other dealing alone with false concepts, mere beliefs which have no basis in fact.

Not infrequently the Christian Science practitioner finds that a person seeking through spiritual means relief from some specific ailment, rests quite content with the sense of physical well-being thereby gained. Ignorant of the true import of spiritual healing, he is unaware that God, through the appearance of His Christ in Christian Science, has "come nigh" to the destruction of false belief. The beneficiary unawakened, perhaps, to the presence of this angel visitor, and in consequence without even a slight understanding of the true meaning of the experience, may be receptive to the argument that the specific need having been met, there is no further demand upon him. This viewpoint would reduce the practice of Christian Science, in respect of obligations entailed by the beneficiary to seek and understand the healing Christ, exactly to the level of material practice. In effect it merely exchanges the medical doctor for the spiritual practitioner.

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