Article October 24, 1908 Issue

Christian Science is based upon the Scriptural teaching...

Boston American

Christian Science is based upon the Scriptural teaching of God and the Scriptural affirmation concerning His creation. The Bible teaches that "God is Love," "God is good," "God is Spirit," "Spirit is Truth," and that God's creation is "after His kind," that it is "very good." Christian Science honors God and His Word, the Holy Bible, by adhering consistently to these fundamental propostitions. Since God made all that was made, "and, behold, it was very good," and since sin. sickness. and death are no part of the very good things which God created, although they have an apparent existence in erring mortal experience, and, consequently, must be grappled with and overcome, there is no other logical conclusion than this, that they are not real.

In Christian Science the term "reality" is not attached to the temporal, but only to that which is spiritual and eternal, and this accords with the Scriptural teaching. St. Paul declared, "But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise: and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should glory in his presence." Here the apostle agrees with the Master's declaration: "It is the Spirit that quickeneth : the flesh [matter] profiteth nothing." In the text St. Paul refers to the spiritual facts, unseen to material sense, and, therefore, not in existence so far as sense testimony is concerned, which, being discovered, bring to nought (nothing) the things that are according to the evidence of the material senses. Thus the Scriptures plainly and clearly corroborate the teaching of Christian Science that when the spiritual fact of being is ascertained the material sense thereof is discovered to be an illusion. This does not mean that creation is an illusion that man is an illusion but that what he is represented to be by material sense is false, while the man himself exists as the creature of God. Every statement contained in the Christian Science text-book is consistently deduced from the Scriptural premises which we have already presented. . . .

Our critic declares "Christianity says that pain is so great a reality that even the creator could feel it," and that God thought of death "with awe." Let us consider what Jesus the Christ, God's representative on earth, said on this subject, while we bear in mind that according to his recorded declarations he acted the will of the Father. When it was reported to him that the damsel was dead. he did not treat the matter with "awe," but brushed it lightly aside, saying, "The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth," and he proved his declaration by awakening the damsel out of sleep through his reliance upon divine Life. He did not say of the woman, "She is suffering from rheumatism," he spoke of her "whom Satan hath bound, lo these eighteen years." He defined Satan as a liar, and referred to Satan's own his offspring as a lie. Thus we have shown by logical reasoning that Jesus regarded disease as a falsity the result of deception: in other words, that it existed in consequence of misguided belief.

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