Article July 31, 1909 Issue

I am neither a member nor an attendant of a Christian Science...

James Sargent

Rochester (N. Y.) Union and Advertiser

I am neither a member nor an attendant of a Christian Science church, but I am an honest investigator of the truth of what it claims to teach. Having read the Rev. Mr.—'s article, recently printed in one of your contemporaries, I am greatly surprised that any minister of the gospel of Christ would stoop to the use of such language. I also wish to say that Sunday evening, May 10, I heard this same gentleman's sermon on "Christian Science in the Light of the Scriptures." I attended the service expecting to hear some logical argument by which I, not being a very close student of the Bible, might decide as to whether Christian Science has a right to base its teachings on those of that book. I must say that I was disappointed. The sermon was very like the article already referred to.

The first sentence in Mrs. Eddy's interpretation of the Lord's Prayer (based, as I suppose, on Genesis i. 27), was dwelt upon at some length, and the thought of the motherhood of God was held up to ridicule. The clergyman did not, however, show why the female, or mother, cannot claim, according to that passage, to be the image of God as well as the male, or father. The passage distinctly says that "God created man in His own image, ... male and female created he them." If there is no mother element in God, how can the woman, or mother, claim to be the image of God? The clergyman would allow that honor only to the male portion of God's creation. The Bible does not speak of a female deity in whose image woman could have been created, so I think Mrs. Eddy more logical than the clergyman, and I prefer to think of God as possessing the qualities of both fatherhood and motherhood, as the above passage states.

Again, he said that Christian Science ignores the flesh. He did not attempt to tell us what Jesus could have meant when he said: "The flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." Nor did he explain Paul's saying, that in the flesh "dwelleth no good thing," and that with the flesh he serves law of sin. He said nothing about the seventh chapter of Romans from the 15th to the 25th verses (which to me sound much like Mrs. Eddy's writings in Science and Health), where Paul says, "If then I do that which I would not, ... it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me." He did not tell us what Jesus or Paul could possibly have meant by speaking so discouragingly of the flesh which he claims to be an essential part of God's image. Nor did he attempt to explain what Paul meant when he said the mind of the flesh, or carnal mind, is "enmity against God"—a part of God's image at war with another part. That does not seem reasonable to me, and Mrs. Eddy's logic comes nearer to satisfying me than does the clergyman's ridicule. Paul says much more on the same line, in Romans viii., which I hope to hear explained.

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