Article March 20, 1902 Issue

Defence of Christian Science

Wesley Spaulding

Dufferin Post,

To the Editor of The Post.

Sir:—Your issue of the 23d inst. reported some extracts from an article by Rev. Dr. Dixon of Boston, denouncing Christian Science at considerable length. I hope your readers have not drawn the inference that this man understands Christian Science and is qualified to treat the subject fairly. It may be that he treated it as fairly as he was able, and if so, his opposition proves his lack of understanding.

To any one who has studied Christian Science with the purpose, not merely of criticising and picking flaws in its method of statement, but with the sincere desire to know the truth concerning it, and with the hope of finding it practical to overcome sin and disease, Dr. Dixon's statements are misleading. He lays claim to the knowledge that Christian Science "really heals by simple and well-known mental processes," while he says it professes to heal in some different way. How many cases of severe sickness has he been instrumental in healing through what he believes is the process by which thousands have been healed in Christian Science? Can he produce one such case and show that his method was on the lines which, according to his own statement, are those taught in the Christian Science text-book? If not, is the position he assumes as a critic of Christian Science more warrantable than that of a lecturer on mathematics who has not demonstrated that he is master of that science, and yet who would insist that two parallel lines meet when extended so far that human vision cannot discern them to be separate lines and still parallel? Now Christian Science shows that we cannot experience godliness without practising cleanliness, while Mr. Dixon's interpretation of this religion is stated to be that "dirt and devotion go together." Does he as an orthodox Baptist believe that his converts gain more purity from the immersion of the material body than from the spiritual cleansing that comes through adherence to the teachings and life of Christ?

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