Article November 23, 1907 Issue

I can scarcely believe that a minister with a reputation...

Reuben Pogson—Hull, England.

The Daily Mail

I can scarcely believe that a minister with a reputation for honesty, common sense, and tolerance would describe "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," by Mary Baker G. Eddy, as "mischievous." To say that her exposition of Christian Science is mischievous is tantamount to saying that Christian Science is wrong. This position is scarcely wise, for in the field of modern theological apologetics the opponents of Christian Science have been forced by its works from such a weak, dangerous, and untenable position. "The capacity of the human mind to resist the introduction of knowledge" is no more widely illustrated than in the history of religion, and one feels that, were it possible, the figures which opposed and criticised all the pioneers of Truth would be glad to return at a later period and erase the stigma which after generations have accorded to their works and names.

A mistake of the ages is the belief in "ages," the failure to see the "nowness" of everything. All the swift-moving panorama of the so-called past,—the Pharisees, disciples, multitudes, scribes, Herod, soldiers; the opposition, slander, envy, lies, insincere approbation, treachery, wavering loyalty, and timid fidelity,—all are with us now. What is the substance of these figures that flit across the pages of our books, our Bibles, to you and me? Does not this substance, form, color, lie in our conception of them, the mental image we make of them? We only recoil from Judas when we have made his treachery live again and strike us. Shakespeare had a glimpse of this—"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." The drama is still going on. "The Passion Play" is not merely enacted once a year in a little German village; it were well for us all to slip off at times to the "greenroom," and in the mirrors of careful analysis see what part we are dressed for and playing.

Fools are we if we cherish the belief that we can crucity the Christ, kick against the pricks, and persecute the true Church. These mental phases of consciousness are laid bare by the teachings of Christian Science, and its critics would be spending their time more profitably were they to doff their yellow garb and assume the humble gown of the student, resolving to learn.

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