Article May 23, 1908 Issue

The Christian Scientist's understanding of the word...

Charles K. Skinner—Benton Harbor, Mich.

News-Palladium

The Christian Scientist's understanding of the word "reality" accords strictly with the teachings of Jesus when he healed the sick and cast out devils (evils) from those who came to him for help. We read in the Bible that God made all that was made, and that His works were eternal and indestructible, and that "they were very good." If sickness and pain were real and eternal, God made them and they could not be changed, nor would Christ Jesus have tried to correct those conditions. It is not had to see this when we consider that with none. of the material senses can we see, hear, or feel God, or recognize His presence. The world has gone on and on, men have come and gone, striving all down the ages to understand God through the mazes of matter, and from that standpoint are no nearer God today than in the beginning. To the materialist, looking no farther than the fading pleasures of to-day for happiness, there is no other reality; he sees nothing of the spiritual, the eternal and enduring. To him, spirituality and spiritual man have no meaning; all is mysticism.

Christian Science is working to correct this condition of thought. It does not teach that the man racked with pain "only thinks he is suffering," as some self-styled critics are wont to say. There has never been anything written by Mrs. Eddy that can be twisted to convey such a meaning when her writings are read from the right standpoint, viz., that of spiritual things. On the contrary, the Christian Scientist knows that to the material senses there is suffering, and his work is to overcome the wrong thought which produced the condition, through his understanding of the power of God to heal. . . . On page 10 of "Unity of Good," Mrs. Eddy says, "Everything is as real as you make it, and no more so. What you see, hear, feel, is a mode of consciousness, and can have no other reality than the sense you entertain of it."

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