Article June 20, 1908 Issue

Happily it is no part of the religion of any Christian Scientist...

Frederick Dixon

South Bucks (England) Free Press

Happily it is no part of the religion of any Christian Scientist to criticize that of his neighbor. Christian Scientists have sufficient trust in God to be perfectly sure that whatever is good in any religion will last, and whatever is not will disappear. They not only read, but act upon the great saying of Gamaliel, "If this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it." For this reason I have no wish to attack another's faith, but when mine is attacked I have the right to reply.

This critic describes Christian Science as a heresy, as if there was a religion or phase of religion in the world that was not heretical in the eyes of those who differed from it. The Church of England is heretical in the eyes of the Church of Rome, the Church of Rome heretical to the Mohammedan; the whole definition is simply one of time and place. He has explained that "as Christianity grew, hospitals came in its track." If he had written that as the orthodox church parted the seamless dress, and separated the healing of sickness from the healing of sin, "hospitals came in its track," he would have been more accurate. The growth of Christianity should have meant the growth of the teaching of the Christ, "And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils." Humbly and patiently Christian Scientists are endeavoring to obey this command to-day; and it is because they are being largely successful that the world is slowly realizing that Christian Science cannot be overthrown. From sickness the critic naturally turned to death. "Decay and death" were, he declared, "the means by which God produced a continuous succession of His creatures." In other words he implies that life grows out of death, and in doing so he incidentally makes God responsible for sin, for Paul writes: "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned."

Christian Science is the effort to reestablish in the world the Christianity taught and demonstrated by Jesus. It means primarily the admission of the allness of God, the God who, in the words of the beloved disciple, is Love. It means the persistent effort to overcome "the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life," which is in itself continuing always in prayer. It means the demonstration of the truth that "the kingdom of heaven is within you" by the demonstration of man's God-given dominion over evil. And it insists that the only way in which it is possible to prove one's belief in the Christ is in the way demanded by Jesus himself when he declared,

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