Article August 8, 1908 Issue

Our critic will be glad to know that Christian Science...

Luther P. Cudworth

The Oregonian

Our critic will be glad to know that Christian Science is doing the healing works which he challenges it to perform, and without suggestion, and if he is earnestly in quest of the proofs he will not have far to seek. While Christian Science practitioners at this time do not claim to effect invariable cures, this does not disprove the efficacy of Christian Science treatment, but rather indicates—as does the failure of the mathematician to solve a given problem—a lack of understanding. They are ready, however, to have the results of their present immature understanding measured with those of other curative systems, and by the Scriptural test: "By their fruits ye shall know them." This is not the first time Christian Scientists have been challenged to produce proof of the healing of so-called incurable disease. Within the last few months such a challenge was answered before the committee on public health at the Massachusetts State House, the healing of Dr. G. W. Barrett, of St. Louis, of leprosy being cited, authenticated, and admitted as evidence before this committee.

Our friend seems to be in trouble about what he thinks he has found in the teachings of Christian Science regarding the impersonality of God and man. The proposition of the unreality and unsubstantiality of matter has long ago been settled and accepted by physical scientists, and the admitted unreliability of the physical senses is filling a niche beside it. Christian Science gives no ground for the assumption that consciousness is ever disembodied or obliterated. Its teaching that there is no matter does not mean that creation is unreal, nor that man is unreal, but it means that it is not what it seems to material sense, that in our present immature condition we do not see things as they are. Paul says: "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." It is the misconception and not the thing itself which is repudiated by Christian Scientists. Science teaches one to look beyond the material, mutable things of life to the spiritual and immortal; to look beyond the material sense of sustenance to Spirit, in whom, as the Scriptures declare, "we live, and move, and have our being." It has regard to the saying of the Master: "The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment." It teaches that existence is not dependent, as it appears, upon matter as substance, but upon God, who not only creates, but upholds all things.

Let me ask the question: Where shall we look for the omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence which the Bible accords to God, save as unfolded in the teaching of Christian Science of one divine, infinite Principle, Mind, Spirit, supreme incorporeal being. These terms employed to express the unlimited, infinite nature of God, do not conflict with St. John's definition that "God is love," nor detract from, but rather increase, man's dependence, his sense of the tenderness, nearness, and availability comprehended in the fatherhood and motherhood of God.

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