Article September 6, 1900 Issue

Replies to Dr. Morse

Hermann S. Hering

News

To the Editor of The News :—In your New York dispatch of Monday's issue you quote from a sermon delivered Sunday evening by the Rev. Dr. F. R. Morse at Calvary Baptist Church in that city, in which he assails the Christian Science text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker G. Eddy. Being the official press representative of this denomination for Maryland, I desire to make an authoritative correction of some of Dr. Morse's remarks.

He said: "While the name of God is frequently used, God himself is denied. We regard this book as essentially atheistic." How any one can read this text-book and then say that God is denied and that this book is essentially atheistic, when the God of the Bible forms the basis of its teachings and is the one only God referred to, it is indeed difficult to see. The God declared throughout this book is the God taught throughout the Bible from Genesis to Revelation—Infinite, without limit in any direction; Omnipotent, all-powerful; Omnipresent, everywhere; Omniscient, all-knowing; the loving Father. According to Jesus' word (John, 4 : 24, R. V.). "God is Spirit;" and according to John (I John, 4 : 16), "God is Love." Christian Science does not teach a human, corporeal, anthropomorphic God, having form or parts, because that is not the God revealed by the Scriptures, and if Dr. Morse's idea of God is corporeal, this would explain why he cannot understand the supreme, infinite God of the Scriptures.

The reverend gentleman also says, "This book is a mass of mystical vagaries and diseased dreams," and is "a subtle web-work of quasi theological enigmas." Jesus said "wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them." What are the fruits of Christian Science? I would like to give one instance that occurred here in Baltimore a few years ago. A lady who had been suffering for about five years with a fibrous tumor, during which time she had undergone several operations by the best surgeons and had been at several sanitariums, still remained a wretched invalid. When she heard of Christian Science she secured the textbook from one of the libraries in this city and read it. In two weeks she was a well woman, the tumor having entirely disappeared, and from that time to this, she has enjoyed perfect health. This is only one instance of hundreds upon hundreds in which people who have read this book have been healed of so-called incurable diseases or invalidism of long standing. Is a book that produces such results deserving of such wholesale condemnation? Is it not more likely that the gentleman does not understand the book?

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