Article January 12, 1929 Issue

The clergyman writing in your recent issue is incorrect...

Charles W. J. Tennant, District Manager of Committees on Publication for Great Britain and Ireland,—England

Sheerness Times

The clergyman writing in your recent issue is incorrect in saying that I have ignored his questions. I explained in my last letter how God, who is the divine Principle of the universe, is made known; but it is evident that the clergyman has not understood my explanation. St. Paul very clearly indicates that God can be known only through spiritual discernment, when he says: "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." This spiritual discernment is gained through the study of the Bible in conjunction with the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. The clergyman should study the chapter on Atonement and Eucharist in the Christian Science textbook. Nothing more comprehensive has ever been written on the subject. In it reason and revelation are reconciled. Jesus himself declared, "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." This clearly indicates that it was not his physical flesh and blood which revealed God, but the Mind of Christ. Christian Science defines God as "incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love" (Science and Health, p. 465). God cannot be a finite, corporeal person. He can be thought of as personal only in an infinite sense. The clergyman, it would appear, has a conception of God as a magnified human being. Mrs. Eddy has very aptly written on page 269 of the same book: "Human philosophy has made God manlike. Christian Science makes man God-like. The first is error; the latter is truth."

Christ Jesus healed all manner of disease, and destroyed sin, before he was crucified. It cannot be said that the physical crucifixion of our Lord heals the sick and saves the sinner. It is his teaching that enables his followers to emulate his example; and it is only by gaining the Mind of Christ that these works can be reproduced to-day. Our critic evidently these not understand that when Jesus said to the Jews, "Which of you convinceth me of sin?" they were trying to make him acknowledge its reality, and thereby to make him guilty of it; but he, knowing the unreality of evil, could neither be convinced nor convicted of sin. Sin, in its widest sense, means a belief in anything apart from God. God is infinite; and it is only in proportion as one gains the understanding of God's infinitude that one overcomes the belief in sin, and comprehends its unreality. I am sorry our critic does not see in the book of Revelation a prophecy for all time. To confine it to the first century is to make the book worthless. Does he imagine that the prophecy of the new heaven and the new earth cannot be realized here and now by anyone who becomes spiritually-minded enough to see them? Speaking of Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy writes on page 22 of her book "Miscellaneous Writings": "Science is neither a law of matter nor of man. It is the unerring manifesto of Mind, the law of God, its divine Principle. ... Christian Science translates Mind, God, to mortals. It is the infinite calculus defining the line, plane, space, and fourth dimension of Spirit."

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