Article April 11, 1908 Issue

In your issue of the I st inst., a writer under the nomde guerre...

Frederick Dixon

Church of England Pulpit

In your issue of the I st inst., a writer under the nom de guerre of "Octavia," asks me to answer a single question. This question, however, immediately branches out in several directions, and in its final shape takes almost an entire column to state. In its initial form the question of our critic is this: "If sin, sickness, and evil be not real while they last, what do healers heal?"

The word "reality" is used in Christian Science to describe all that is eternal and indestructible; in a word, God and the spiritual kingdom. It is used to separate the absolute from the relative, in the way, as one of the greatest scholars and churchmen of modern times has shown, John separated them in distinguishing the Truth of Jesus from the mere truth of Pilate. It follows that no Christian Science "healer" could or would attempt

to heal a condition that was real. What he does is to attempt to destroy the mere relative sense of what the patient considers the reality of sickness and sin, which is quite another thing. And if he succeeds in this there comes to the patient some understanding of that absolute truth which was what Jesus referred to when he said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. . . The writer goes on to say that "to be strictly logical Christian Scientists should abstain from food as well as medicine." To be strictly logical, because two and two are four, every schoolboy ought to be able to work out the problems of higher mathematics. Now Jesus did work out this particular problem during the temptation in the wilderness, and Jesus was the way. It does not follow, however, that because a schoolboy cannot work out an eclipse, a schoolboy is illogical; nor does it follow that because a Christian Scientist has not destroyed his own materiality sufficiently to be able to walk all the way Jesus trod, a Christian Scientist is illogical. To do without food would be to overcome death, and Paul said, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." ...

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