Article June 8, 1907 Issue

I am not a Christian Scientist

C. M. Merica—Chicago, Ill.

Daily News,

I am not a Christian Scientist. I with my family came to Chicago as Methodists, and at once became regular attendants at and contributors to the St. James church and a teacher and workers in the St. James Sabbath School. For the last two years we have been attending Christian Science churches, and my experiences and observations in attending these churches have led me to conclusions diametrically opposed to those of the pastor of that church. One of the first things to attract me to the Christian Science Church was the universal cheerfulness, hope, and assurance depicted in the countenances of the members and prevailing in all the work of the Church. To one like myself, whose mind had become thoroughly imbued with the teaching that Christ did not mean what he said in his oft-repeated and imperative command to all his followers to "heal the sick," it would have been very easy to believe that "Christian Science was a disease peculiar to the brain." But "by their fruits ye shall know them." ...

It is true the Christian Science pulpit does not have any of the so-called "funny" or humorous ministers, nor does it preach politics, political economy, and the like, and the Sunday services are calm and serious—largely Scriptural readings. The doctor's observations that the Christian Science churches are usually located in the "fashionable boulevards" or other places of beauty are also correct. And why should the churches not be so located? Christian Science, as I understand it, is religiously opposed to having one church on the boulevard for the rich and aristocratic and another in some uninviting, out-of-the-way place for the opposite class. If, however, any one will take the pains to investigate for himself, he will find, as I think I have found, that the congregations and the membership even of these seemingly aristocratic churches are made up of people from all honorable walks of life, with the "leisure class" very much in the minority. Many of the active members have been redeemed from the lowest depths of drunkenness, morphinism, dissipation, and all forms of vice, to respected manhood and womanhood, divinely healed from all their sins and diseases, and have been accorded the same treatment by the Church as Jesus accorded Mary Magdalene.

In my search for the truth or the falsity of the doctrine of Christian Science I have observed that nearly every argument I have seen intended to refute Christian Science has been directed against some doctrine, practice, or belief attributed to Christian Science, but which in reality is absolutely foreign to it.

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