Article February 2, 1899 Issue

Friendly Editorial Comment

From the Pittsburg (Pa.) Daily News we republish the following thoughtful editorial:—

It was a useful service which the believers in Christian Science rendered in fetching to this city Mr. Carol Norton, who lectured on their behalf in Carnegie Music Hall the evening of January 16. He is an authorized and responsible expounder of it; what he says must be accepted as a trustworthy description of the belief. No person of judgment ever for a moment takes the statement of an average member of a Catholic or Protestant Church as authoritative of its creed, because that involves a body of historical and other learning with which he is unacquainted, to say nothing of the accuracy in the use of words to which he has not been trained. No person of judgment will accept the statement of the average person as to what there is in our most familiar laws. The judge puts a very different face on them. So it is of any of the schools of medicine. We remember when Christian Science began to be talked about in this town, and very distinctly remember that it was jumbled up with faith cure and mind cure and the old mesmerism which the fathers recalled. The people who undertook to explain it off did not know what they were talking about. It was useful to bring here a man who can speak by authority, who, through the studies, of years, knows what he is expounding. He took the right course, being purely expository save when he halted a moment to give faith cure and mind cure a Roman thrust, and give the iron-headed Calvinists a resounding blow. At bottom Christian Science is a new creed; about that there can be neither if nor and, according to Mr. Norton's explicit teaching; it is fundamentally theological, being, as he was strenuous in asserting, a new interpretation of the divine; a distinct discovery of that which for ages had been covered up, of the method of the divine operation of healing. He comes not from the mother society nor the mother organization, but from the Mother Church, which is in Boston, or he represents that, as a member of its Board of Lectureship. I was wise in him, as he said, not to attempt to defend it, saying that it needs no defense, but to explain it, and his own confidence in it was testified to best by his self-restraint in the face of prejudices which he had unavoidably to encounter. He did not awaken antagonisms by any serious attacks; as to his blow at the Calvinists, they were delighted by it, because they are so used to that sort of thing that they would think themselves neglected and be unhappy without it. Now that the people of this town, who cared to, know what Christian Science is, let them answer it, if they do not believe in it, and not denounce it. Mr. Norton has set them an example. He gave reasons; let them give reasons, and then stop.

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