Article July 3, 1909 Issue

Among other subjects our critic plunges lightly into...

Frederick Dixon

Guernsey (Eng.) Star

Among other subjects our critic plunges lightly into an attack on the Christian Science teaching of the atonement. Quite apart from the fact that it is manifest that he does not understand the teaching of Christian Science on this subject in the very least, he talks as if orthodox Christianity were agreed on it. He says that this doctrine "means one thing to a Christian and another to a Scientist." On which side does he rank the vice-principal of the Theological College at Lichfield, who declares that the Miltonic view, besides "offending one's moral sense," "logically and rapidly leads us to undiluted Arianism;" and then proceeds to discuss what he terms "four typical modern theories of the atonement" as a prelude to developing a fifth one of his own. When the orthodox critics of Christian Science can agree among themselves what the correct teaching of the atonement really is, Christian Scientists may be expected to discuss their view with them. Until then it is scarcely profitable.

It is simply childish to maintain that the Christian Science church (which in forty years has wound itself round the entire globe, so that today its meetings are held northward in Christiania and Stockholm; southward in the Transvaal and Australia; eastward along the Persian Gulf and the Chinese littoral; and westward on the Pacific slope) is a profitable heresy, founded on blasphemous nonsense, promulgated through shallow magazine articles, written by fools for fools. Yet that is the gentleman's description in his own words.

To the ordinary man, puzzled by the riddles of physical existence, Christian Science is sooner or later presented. He may be sympathetic, he may be antagonistic, or he may be as indifferent as a Laodicean, but he has before him a phenomenon which is arresting the attention of the civilized world, and, if he is wise, he will put it aside and say nothing, or he will investigate it. If he decides upon investigation, it will entail the effort, not merely to master the theory, but to demonstrate it. He will find that he is being led not to the study of disease, but to the study of health; not to the dissection of evil, but to the realization of good. He will find that he is incessantly striving to put off the old man and to put on the new; in other words, that, as Mrs. Eddy says, "in order to cure his patient, the metaphysician must first cast moral evils out of himself and thus attain the spiritual freedom which will enable him to cast physical evils out of his patient" (Science and Health, p. 366). If he will do this patiently and humbly, he will find the secret of healing in Christian Science, and there will open before him "the wide horizon's grander view."

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AMONG THE CHURCHES
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