Article August 7, 1909 Issue

Theology has for so long been concerned in devising...

W. J. Bonnin

Blackpool (Eng.) Times

Theology has for so long been concerned in devising creeds to bring the teaching of the Bible within the range of human understanding, in explanations and interpretations intended to satisfy the human mind and to transgress as little as possible its materialistic limitations and methods, that the reversal of this process demanded by Christian Science is often at first a little startling and disconcerting. Truth is and must ever be unerring, immutable, spiritual; it is the huma mind that is in need of change if we are to comprehend it. This is the literal meaning of repentance.

How clearly Paul saw this as the great necessity is shown by his constant insistence on it in his letters: "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind;" "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus;" "If any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know;" "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned," etc. So that the human, material mind can get in answer to its query, "What is truth?" no more enlightenment today than it did when it spoke through the lips of Pilate. The fact is that it is as impossible for that mind to comprehend Truth as it would be for one who had been in darkness all his life to comprehend the nature of light without seeing it. Consequently the only real argument for Christian Science is the demonstration of it. The great fact of Truth and the strict logical deductions from it must be accepted; that is the province of faith. Christian Science comes to transform this faith into knowledge.

It will be seen that the statement of your correspondent, that it may be philosophically true that there is no such thing as sickness and yet be practically true that there is such a thing, amounts to a belief in two truths, each proving the other to be false. What but discord and disaster might be expected from such a stupendous contradiction? What, in fact, has resulted from it through the ages? For it is, in another form, the same old contradiction that ascribes existence and power to both good and evil, setting up a rival and hostile power to omnipotence, and would have us believe that suffering and pain are sent by a God who is Love. The woe of the world is the result. The only way that sickness can be a means of spiritual ennoblement is in its being destroyed, as a false belief, by the knowledge of the truth that all which is, is good. To affirm that the Book of life does not profess to banish sickness, but uses it as a sort of ally, is at least a little paradoxical, and forces the question: Why did Jesus and his disciples, the apostles and the early Christians, so continually and universally heal the sick? why today do we seek to get well, if thereby is destroyed a means for spiritual advancement?

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