Article December 28, 1907 Issue

THE DISCOVERY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

JOHN C. LATHROP.

It is noteworthy that no one who has obtained an understanding of Christian Science is disturbed over the question as to who was its discoverer in this age. Those who understand the divine Principle and rules of this Science to an extent that they have been able to demonstrate them, have never been troubled over this much mooted query. It is also noticeable that criticisms and attacks to this end invariably have come from those who confessedly do not possess this understanding; therefore such critics necessarily are placed at a disadvantage, and are ever on the defensive. It is doubtful whether the revered Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy, has been as interested in persuading the world who the discoverer was, as she has been in teaching the world what the discovery is, well knowing that when the latter was rightly understood the former would be also.

When the deceitful priests and scribes sought to entrap the great Master into denying the position and authority of Caesar, he perceived their craftiness, and as was his method, he went directly to the heart of the matter. He demanded to know whose images and superscription was on their coin. They replied that it was Caesar's. Then said Jesus, "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's." The situation has not changed to-day. There is to be found the same image and superscription of Caesar upon the coin (the mortal thought) of to-day. There is to be found the same image, consisting of the same material thoughts,—selfish, proud, personal, dictatorial, and sensual; the same superscription, expressed in erring laws which would create and destroy, judge and condemn, hate and fear, arrogate and deceive.

Jesus rendered unto Caesar the things which were Caesar's. He rendered unto the temporal, the material, the erroneous, the things which were theirs, but he rendered unto God the things which were God's. This differentiation and separation were made and kept distinct and plain. It was his custom, his practice, his teaching, to separate the chaff from the wheat and to keep them separated. Thus he was able to establish the reality of the harmonious, the healthy, the good, the spiritual, all that was like God; and upon the realization of this established order, the opposite thoughts, the discordant, the sinful, the material, faded away and vanished into their native nothingness.

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