Article January 2, 1909 Issue

Mr. Chesterton is quoted by our critic as saying: "To...

George Shaw Cook

Evanston (Ill.) Press

Mr. Chesterton is quoted by our critic as saying: "To tell a man that it is his own fault if he has a toothache, is to cease to be a Christian while uttering eight words." Christian Science does not teach that suffering is necessarily the fault of the sufferer, but rather that the sufferer is the victim of some erroneous mental condition which claims to have power to cause suffering. Christian Scientists do not, therefore, charge sufferers with being responsible for their own suffering, although physical suffering may sometimes be due to conscious sin. Rather do they give their attention to gently guiding the sufferer out of the mistaken belief that his suffering is natural and inevitable.

Mr. Chesterton continues: "Christian Science (so called) says that pain is not a reality." Christian Scientists recognize that pain seems perfectly real to the false sense of the sufferer, but they prove its unreality by removing or destroying it. The mere fact that Christian Science treatment has annihilated pain in thousands of instances, convinces Christian Scientists by practical experience that pain is destructible, and therefore in the true sense unreal. For this and other good reasons Christian Scientists are not prepared to agree with Mr. Chesterton that pain "is so great a reality that even the creator could feel it," nor with our critic in his assertion that, because Jesus suffered on the cross, "a certain actuality and even sanctity has clung around the pain of prosaic men."

Christian Science does not reveal a creator who could suffer pain or be sick or die. Christian Science teaches that the one and only creator is God, divine Love, eternal Life. It teaches that this God who is Life and Love made "all that was made" and pronounced it good, but did not make anything evil or that could cause evil, pain, sickness, or death. What possible comfort can the sufferer derive from believing that pain and sickness are from God, and therefore are real and indestructible because Godlike? Has such a belief been of any advantage to the countless millions who have sickened and died under the intolerable discouragement which it fosters? On the other hand, is it any comfort or advantage to the sufferers in this day and age to have learned through Christian Science that their suffering is needless, that pain and sickness are illegitimate, monstrous, abnormal, unreal, and therefore can be successfully resisted and scientifically banished? The answer comes from more than a million grateful beneficiaries of Christian Science that its teaching of man's rightful dominion over evil (including pain and sickness) has caused them untold joy and comfort and has given them a foretaste of the "new heaven and new earth" in which St. John said "there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away."

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