Article December 21, 1907 Issue

Your reviewer may well wonder, as I fancy your readers...

Capt. Geoffrey Wilkinson

Paddington (Eng.) Times.

Your reviewer may well wonder, as I fancy your readers will do, why, if Christian Science is based on such sandy foundations, it has been considered necessary to assail it with such vigor and frequency for over thirty years, and why, in spite of all the ridicule, opposition, and misrepresentation it has encountered, the movement had continued to grow with ever-increasing rapidity. Does it not suggest itself to them that the nature of its foundations has been mistaken? I do not think that I am wrong in stating that the large majority of those who are now Christian Scientists have started by ridiculing and opposing what they thought to be the teaching of Christian Science, but what on further inquiry they found to be their own misconeeption of its teaching. It is easy to see from the points quoted in the review that our critic has fallen into the old trap, has read passages which refer to the spiritual reality as if they applied to the testimony of the physical senses, when, as Mrs. Eddy has been careful to point out, "the spiritual fact and the material belief of things are contradictions" (Science and Health, p. 289); and on this basis has ereeted a charge against Christian Science of being contradictory and illogical.

One would have thought that the charge that Christian Science is neither Christian nor scientific had so often been shown to be untenable that a prudent critic would have passed it by. If by its being unchristian the critic means to imply that it does not square with the teachings of the Church of England, then I fear that Christian Science must plead guilty. But in such a case the teachings of the other divisions of the Christian Church must be classed as unchristian. Now the Founder of Christianity left one test, and one test only, by which his followers might be recognized, when he said, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also," and it is a fact that Christian Science is doing these works, and healing "all manner of sickness" and sorrow and sin by the power of the Spirit alone, as did Jesus, to whose life and words the Christian Science text-book, Science and Health, offers so wonderful a key. It is to this fact that Christian Science appeals in its claim to be called Christian. With regard to its claim to be called scientific, it becomes necessary first to define what the term "science" signifies. If we take Stormouth's definition, it is "knowledge in any department of mind or matter, digested and arranged into a system." Mrs. Eddy writes, "Sneers at the application of the word Science to Christianity cannot prevent that from being scientific which is based on divine Principle, demonstrated according to a divine given rule, and subjected to proof" (Science and Health, p. 341).

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