Article March 14, 1908 Issue

The naive argument that because God is almighty it is...

Willard S. Mattox

St. Albans (Vt.) Messenger

The naive argument that because God is almighty it is limiting Him to say He could not create matter, if carried to its logical conclusion would make God the author of all sin and disease, a doctrine which is rapidly becoming repugnant to all forms of Christian belief. By the same reasoning, it would be limiting God to say that He could not create, instigate, originate, or be responsible for all manner of evil, dishonesty, greed, lust, murder, hatred, envy, revenge. Yet we do boldly assert that He has not created such states or conditions of consciousness, because He is "of purer eyes than to behold evil." Christian Science is proving attractive, partly because it offers its adherents a better concept of God than that which believes that He could either create His opposite or permit it to exist. When God is depicted as man's natural friend, as a loving parent, as the very essence of good, whose nature, character, attributes, activities, laws, purposes, and designs are all good, through and through, forever and ever, without change or a possibility of change or deviation from absolute and perfect goodness, then man learns to love Him. There is an incentive to study Him, to surrender the will to Him, to trust Him and obey Him. Such an attitude toward God is the desideratum of all preaching, of all evangelical work. It means holiness, repentance, righteousness, peace, and health. A belief that God can make or has made that which by nature and in motive is His own direct opposite, has never really attracted men and has never healed them.... The Church of Christ, Scientist, does not do away with the sacraments: it gives them a spiritual meaning. Baptism and holy communion are not considered dead rites by Christian Scientists, but the material and unspiritual interpretation of these sacraments is so denominated. Mrs. Eddy does not inveigh against the spiritual observance of all the rites which were instituted by Jesus, but she insists that they ought not to lose their significance and value by being smothered in the grave-clothes of a literal and purely formal interpretation of the ceremony.

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THE LECTURES
March 14, 1908
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