Article January 5, 1907 Issue

Christian Scientists believe that all that God made was...

W. C. Williams

Baltimore (Md.) American

Christian Scientists believe that all that God made was good. If sick and evil men were God's handiwork it would be monstrous for any one to attmept to cure them; man cannot improve on God's handiwork. Christian Science teaches that God does not make man sinful or diseased; that pain and suffering are no more necessary as an aid to righteousnes than is sin. Pain often makes a man seek God, after all other remedies have failed or he has learned that sin is the cause of his suffering and wished to abandon it, but this does not make sickness a necessary forerunner of goodness any more than insanity is the predecessor of spirituality; such a law would banish the healthy man from heaven.

Jesus sent his followers into all the world to heal the sick; he would not have done so if he thought sickness was God-ordained to engender sympathy. The bishop also, I believe, commended the physicians for giving their lives to the blessed work of assuaging pain, yet he derided Christian Science for denying "pain and suffering and all the sympathy they need and call for."

The reverend doctor said we must have pain to have Christian sympathy. If he had the same realization that Christian Scientists have, that pain is caused by the breaking of God's law, he would not think, perhaps, that sympathy was so well merited. Rather should the ignorance of the sufferer be accorded sympathy for his unconsciously self-imposed fears and beliefs and pains; but true sympathy is not condolence—it is enlightment. As Bishop Leighton said, "Ignorance itself is disease, the deepest, most treacherous and damning malady of the soul."

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