Wrong Condemned

Edgar M'Leod

Omaha (Neb.) Record-Herald

In attempting to discredit Christian Science, your correspondent groups it with theosophy and the religions of the Orient, and while it is not the intent of this article to depreciate the highest sense of good entertained by any individual, yet the classification of Christian Science with these religions is manifestly unjust, as even their own adherents regard them more as philosophies than religions. Christian Science, through the sick it has raised up from beds of pain, through vicious habits corrected, and the desire for strong drink, tobacco, and opiates destroyed, is proving itself a religion possessed of the vital elements which gave the early Christian church the life that outlived the Cæsars.

The passage quoted from a letter received from a lady at the head of the Order of the White Rose, in which she refers to art, religion, and spirituality as the "stupendous illusions of time," is set up as a false model of Christian Science, which would therefore have to shoulder this sweeping obliteration. Mr. Mackay exclaims: "What can we think of a mind that can assert that art, religion, and spirituality are 'stupendous illusions of time'! And yet her advance has been logical enough. If sin and sickness and death are 'illusions,' it is only one step further to assert that religion and spirituality, etc., and all other things are illusions."

In the first place neither the Order of the White Rose nor any other order are emanations of Christian Science. If this lady was ever identified with Christian Science, as has been suggested, she certainly had rejected it in its entirety before voicing this sentiment.

Mr. Mackay deduces that her advance from Christian Science to this position was logical on the ground that if sin, sickness, and death are illusions, it is but a step further to the assertion that religion, spirituality, etc., are illusions, in the light of the Gospel and the teaching of the Master. This deduction is not well drawn.

That sin, sickness, and death are stubborn conditions which have confronted poor humanity for the aeons is indisputable; but that they are to be overcome and erased from the experience of man through the accession of spirituality must be true, if Holy Writ is true, else the gospels have their foundation in sand.

The first chapter of Genesis holds God responsible for all that was made, not for nearly all, but for all that was made, and in that graphic account is no word or hint of moan, or blight, or tear.

When Jesus began to declare man's inalienable right to life, health, and liberty, the Pharisees pointed to the sick, the halt, and the blind that from time immemorial had begged by their highways, but the meek, mighty Nazarene shattered their arguments by healing the multitudes. In rebuking the Pharisees for their unwillingness to see the sick restored. Jesus referred to the woman he healed as one whom Satan had bound, plainly indicating that her infirmity was neither right nor real. If God caused Lazarus to die, why did Jesus reverse this decree by calling him from out the tomb?

So Mrs. Eddy says, on page 476 of Science and Health, "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him, where sinning mortal man appears in sense. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick."

Mr. Mackay's admonition that in contemplating Christian Science one must decide whether he shall follow Mrs. Eddy or Christ, will be found unfair and unwarranted by any one taking the trouble to read Science and Health, the textbook of Christian Science. No teacher since apostolic days has been as insistent in pointing to Christ as the model of daily life as Mrs. Eddy. In her last message to the Mother Church in Boston she says: "I again repeat, follow your Leader, only so far as she follows Christ."

The Scientist does not teach that sickness is simply fancy or imagination, for he knows it is solid conviction to those accepting it as a fact, but he does hold that God is Life, Truth, and Love, and that man is His reflection, hence, in reality he can neither be sick nor sinful, and he proves his contention, though perhaps feebly at the present hour, by the sick that are healed and the sinful that are reclaimed, ascribing all honor to God.

The long list of charms, cures, and cults with which Mr. Mackay has attempted to parallel the healing of Christian Science, are separated from the latter by a gulf as wide as that which lay between Dives and Lazarus.

Christian Science masters disease through the understanding that God is the Principle of health and harmony, and, as such, abolishes everything unlike Himself, while the cures Mr. Mackay pins his faith to, are wrought either through the blind faith that cured Sir Humphry Davy's patient, by the introduction of a clinical thermometer into his mouth, or much worse, through hypnotic suggestion, a belief in the control of one mind over another.

Edgar M'Leod.
In Omaha (Neb.) Record-Herald.

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