Article August 1, 1908 Issue

The charge that the Christ-healing was the work not...

E. M. Ramsay

Edinburgh (Scotland) Dispatch

The charge that the Christ-healing was the work not of God, but of the devil, was brought long years ago against the great Founder of Christianity himself, and he warned the faithful followers of his time that they too would be relieved, and the good they should do be attributed to Beelzebub. The people who brought these charges against the Master were not the publicans and sinners, but those who represented the formal religion of the day,—scribes, Pharisees, and doctors of the law. It is sad to have to point out that some of the most unfair attacks on Christian Science come from the clergy, from men who are not themselves fulfilling Christ's command to heal the sick, but who are doing their utomost to discourage and discredit those who are taking the first steps in this direction.

It need not surprise any one to have our clerical critic assert that Satan is a very adroit and intellectual being, since he ascribes to him that power which in his own words "heals bodies and improves morals," that power which Christian Scientists firmly believe to be nothing less than the power of the Holy Spirit, of the one omnipotent, all-compassionate God Himself. Christian Scientists accept without reservation the definition of the word "devil" given by Jesus Christ. In John's Gospel he tells us that the devil abode not in the truth because there is no truth in the devil, and that he is the father of lies. In Luke's Gospel, and in many other familiar passages, our Master speaks of illness as the work of Satan, of the devil, and tells us that the knowledge of the truth shall make us free. This is precisely what Christian Science teaches—namely, that every form of misery, that sin, poverty, is the effect of the devil, of a false, ignorant sense of life; that it can be cured, and is daily being cured, by the knowledge of the truth, by the knowledge of God as Spirit, Life, Love, the giver of all good, "with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." Our critic, on the other hand, assumes that diseases are procured by God, and healed by the devil. To our thought it is a self-evident fact that a fountain cannot send forth at the same place sweet waters and bitter; that a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit, and that it is not the devil's business to improve men's morals, to heal the sick, and to reform the sinner. Indeed, we might go a little farther and say, "If the devil improves men's morals, the world needs a little more of the devil." Christian Science does not teach that "there is no heaven, no earth, no pain." It teaches that "the kingdom of God is within you." It teaches that the kingdom is not a locality, but a state of consciousness into which nothing that loveth or maketh a lie can enter, and it is showing men and women of this time how to get rid of the wrong thoughts that make this world a hell, how to take the first steps towards heaven.

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