Article May 4, 1907 Issue

Our critic undertakes to ridicule Christian Science by...

Alfred Farlow

Boston Times

Our critic undertakes to ridicule Christian Science by the assertion, "You seem to have a hand, but it is only in the seeming." This ridiculous statement is not a reasonable deduction from the premise of Christian Science. It does not take into consideration what Christian Science gives in the place of what it repudiates. While Christian Science affirms that the universe is not material, it does not declare it to be unreal. It is the false, material concept of things which is denied by this Science, not the thing itself. Each part of man and the universe, from the smallest to the greatest, is real, though not what it seems to be, to that quality of understanding which does not perceive it from the spiritual view-point. Christian Science affirms that the spiritual understanding of creation is the correct understanding, that all the troubles of earth are based upon a misunderstanding, and that they are all corrected by attaining and practising a right sense of cause and effect. Our critic should note that it was Jesus who denied the reality of death, He said of the damsel: "She is not dead, but sleepeth;" thus denying that death was what it was believed to be by those who witnessed it, and affirming it to be a dormant mental condition from which its victim could be aroused by Divine power. It is true that Christian Scientists do deport themselves in a measure as if they believed sin and sickness to be real; that is, they recognize the existence of these in erring mortal experiences and that they must be dealt with and overcome. Even a ghost must be explained away, although to the well informed it is understood to be merely an apparition. Every form of error must be met and mastered with the truth.

The gentlemen declares that "all people who think themselves sick are simply insane." This gives no adequate understanding of Christian Science. Sickness is not believed to be something wrought up in the imagination, though its foundation is understood in Science to be mental; and this fact is proved when, by correcting the mental condition, the discordant bodily condition disappears. Almost everybody in this age of the world admits that the mental has something to do with the bodily condition, and although many as yet are not ready to admit the sweeping declarations of Science, they have not been able to estimate to what extent the mental has to do with the physical, nor to say "thus far and no farther." It has been left to Mrs. Eddy. the Discoverer of Christian Science, to solve and demonstrate this proposition to the age. While Christian Science condemns unreasonable dietetics and hygienic methods, it advocates temperance in all things. It advocates fresh air and pure food, and cleanliness of both mind and body, on the basis that the purest, cleanest, and best is most nearly the spiritual, and therefore the most healthful and desirable.

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