Article February 3, 1906 Issue

Christian Science teaches the immediate and absolute...

L. H. Jones

Lexington (Ky.) Herald.

Christian Science teaches the immediate and absolute supremacy of good. The word "God" is simply a word used by man to express his highest conception of good, and when we speak of an omnipotent God we mean the omnipotence of good, we mean that infinite good has all power, and consequently that its opposite, evil, has no power. Therefore evil, or the devil, is simply a claim to be something which has power to oppose God, good. The word "Satan" means that which opposes. This is what happened to our first parents. This Satan claimed, and induced them to believe that it was something that had power, that there was something different from God, or good, which had power to oppose Him. It said to them that there was something to be known apart from and different from good. God said to them what He is saying to the world today, In the day that ye shall know both good and evil, both God and devil, ye shall surely die; which was equivalent to saying, If ye shall know good only, ye shall surely not die.

This is what Christian Science means when it denies the existence of a personal devil; it refuses to know evil, or to attribute power or reality to anything unlike God. And through this obedience it is realizing and fulfilling the promise of the Master, who said, "He that believeth on me [not he that believeth on a devil], the works that I do shall he do also."

That Christian Science is doing these works is now generally conceded, even by those who feel it to be their duty to oppose it. Within the past month a minister preached a sermon in which he spoke of the work Christian Science is doing for suffering humanity in the following terms:—

"It is working cures,—we might almost say miracles,—both physical and spiritual, in the bodies and souls of men and women."

The important admissions here contained are:—

First. That Christian Science is doing these works,—works which neither of the churches represented by our critics are doing or pretending to do;

Second. That it is doing these works by the power of the truth which it embraces.

If, then, Christian Science reveals a truth in the Bible which the other churches have not discovered, it must be because it has an improved understanding of God's Word. An indispensable part of this improved understanding of the Bible consists in knowing the unreality of evil; that is, that evil has no existence outside of the human or carnal sense of life, which is in itself lawless; that is, has no legitimate existence. All things that have real existence exist in God according to the laws of His or nature.

A thing can have being or existence, therefore, only as it conforms to law, the law of God's being or the law of good. This is the law of the universe, the law of nature; there is no other law. The proposition two times three are five has no reality because it has no basic law to give it reality. It may appear to be very real to one who believes it, even to the utter exclusion of that which alone is real; viz., two times three are six. But however devoutly one may believe it, yea, though all mankind should believe it, this will not impart the least bit of reality to it. It is just as unreal when believed by a Christian as when believed by a pagan, and will get a Christian in just as much trouble if he does not learn better. An error is just as unreal if some devout soul thinks he got it out of the Bible as if he got it anywhere else; and it is even more important that somebody should correct the error, if he thinks it came out of the Bible.

This carnal or mortal mind, this death mind, is the only devil known to Christian Science. It is not real because it was not created by God. It is not real because it has no law to support it. As Paul says, "The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be."

L. H. Jones.
Lexington (Ky.) Herald.

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