The Reasonableness of Christian Science

WILLIAM M. GREGORY

Portland (Ore.) Brieflet

To the Editor.

You have asked me to write briefly and tell you why Christian Science appears to me reasonable.

From considerable opportunity for personal observation of the healing power of Christian Science, I know as a truth that it has power in the healing of disease. To me all truths are reasonable and therefore the healing virtue of Christian Science is reasonable. As soon as Marconi sends messages through space for many miles by wireless telegraphy, we recognize its reasonableness.

But the healing of the body is not its only or chief concern, for Christian Science is a religion; and to me its healing power is the more reasonable because but a corollary of its religious truths.

As a religion, it is reasonable because it offers a complete and satisfactory philosophy of life. It emphasizes and insists upon the practical application to the affairs of daily life, of the teachings of him who spake as never man spake.

As a philosophy this Science of Mind teaches and enforces the superiority of spiritual power and the evanescent nature of all that is material. It teaches that man—the real man—is made in God's image and likeness, is spiritual, and that as we yield ourselves to the government of divine Mind, or the power of good, we manifest good in our bodies and in all our environment. To quote the language of Mrs. Eddy in Science and Health (p. 261), "Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionably to their occupancy of your thoughts."

It appears to me reasonable to believe that the human mind has to do with the sickness as well as with the growth of the body and the operation of all bodily functions. We all judge the disposition of a person, or of an animal even, by the physical appearance, and that the physical appearance is the index of the mind rather than that the mind reflects the physical appearance, will be admitted. Why, then, is it not reasonable to believe that a man's sick body is caused by his sick mind?

It is not conceivable that the divine Mind, "the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth," who "fainteth not, neither is weary," is ever sick, fearful, malicious, lustful, or selfish. On the contrary, at least you and I believe, that God is Love, and that he that loveth not knoweth not God.

And what is more supremely reasonable than to believe that God's choicest earthly gifts are, by the divine order of things, bestowed upon those who, recognizing their spiritual nature, attune themselves to the divine Mind, as the receiving instrument of a Marconi station is attuned to receive the message which otherwise would have less effect upon it than the buzzing of an insect's wing.

Do you question that this could affect man's well-being in all his environments?

All will admit that a man who is in perfect harmony with the laws of his being, or God's laws, can be neither poverty-stricken, sick, sinful, fearful, nor unhappy. Is it not, then, most reasonable to believe that the glad recognition by any man of his spiritual or God-given nature, and that God worketh in him "to will and to do of His good pleasure," tends to material prosperity, health, comfort, unselfishness, and courage? or in other words to godliness, which is godlikeness.

In the language of another, "The oceans of the Infinite are beyond all our plummets, and Truth's unmeasured store is his who dares to know himself Truth's child."

WILLIAM M. GREGORY.
In Portland (Ore.) Brieflet.

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