Article January 23, 1902 Issue

Christian Science as a Religion

BY CLARENCE A. BUSKIRK

The Indianapolis Sentinel

The new always encounters opposition from the old. Habits of thinking, prejudices, business interests, seem to be interfered with. The rancor and presistency of the attacks upon Christian Science are a palpable proof that the Christian Science thought is manifesting a tremendous energy and influence. Its adherents feel that it is their duty to defend against these attacks, because, from the standpoint of their experience and investigation, the doctrine and practice of Christian Science are of the very highest good to humanity. Misrepresentations, revilings, sneers, falsehoods (in fact, "all manner of evil" things, as was foretold by Jesus and his followers), are used against them. But they victoriously point to the hundreds of thousands of instances where the sick have been restored to health, after drug medication had confessed its failure, and to the thousands upon thousands of instances where materialists and agnostics have found the knowledge of God and been led into better lives, through its teachings. They point to the fact that its growth is now more rapid and powerful than the growth of any other church in Christendom. They ask that the scriptural rule of evidence be applied to them: Let the tree be judged by its fruits.

The adherents of Christian Science understand that it is the new-old religion of Jesus Christ. Man-made creeds have sadly mutilated that religion. The command, "Preach the gospel," "Heal the sick," has been split in twain. The promise of Jesus, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also," has been silently slurred and ignored as something mythical and apochryphal. Notwithstanding Jesus expressly declared that the works which he did were of the Father and not of himself, man-made theology has taught that Christ performed his works of healing by some special power in his own person because of kinship to God. Jesus declared that he came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it; yet many churchmen make bold to teach that the miracles he performed were in contravention of God's laws in order to afford evidence of his mission. Christian Science teaches that God is Spirit; that God is Love; that His laws are eternal and unchanging; that Jesus performed his mighty works to prove that his teachings were true, but not to prove that God's laws were changeable, or that God ever could make laws and afterward find it convenient to have them violated. Christian Science teaches that Christ performed mightier works in healing than Elijah or any other before him, because he had a knowledge superior to theirs of the laws of his Father, which he was fulfilling, not destroying; and that he was our Wayshower, and that as we learn more and more, from his teachings, promises, commands, and example, how to apply the eternal and beneficent spiritual laws to ourselves and our fellow-men, as spiritual beings in the image and likeness of God, we can better follow his command to preach the gospel (good news) and heal the sick by spiritual methods, and better illustrate the grand scriptural statement, "The prayer of faith shall save the sick."

Jesus healed through God's spiritual laws acting upon us as spiritual beings, and thus dealt directly with the causes of all human discord, which are sin or disobedience to God's laws. When he cured the lame man, Jesus declared that it was the same thing to cure him of his sin as it was to tell him to take up his bed and walk. Sometimes men argue, even from pulpits, that Christ healed the blind man by anointing his eyes with clay moistened with spittle, and not by spiritual means. Why, then, did he heal other blind men, and not use such material? Why, then, do not those preachers who argue in that way get the doctors to make a clay-and-spittle ointment for blindness? It is puerile to say that the clay and spittle had any medicinal virtues, or that he used them on that single occasion otherwise than as we shake hands or bow to each other, in compliance with a habit and fashion of our day; unless, indeed, he spat on the clay in token of his contempt for material agencies for healing. The churchman who tries to argue that Jesus did not perform his works of healing through spiritual agencies alone, has to violate every rule of logic, and short-sightedly plays into the hands of materialists and atheists.

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