Article August 14, 1909 Issue

When we talk of salvation, what do we mean? Salvation...

W. J. Bonnin

Birkdale and Southport (Eng.) Review.

When we talk of salvation, what do we mean? Salvation from what? The answer of Christian Science is that the only salvation is a practical salvation, that a hope of salvation is no salvation, and that sin and the fruits of sin,—wretchedness and misery, disease, disappointment, and despair,—all these go to make the hell from which humanity sighs for salvation. Salvation here and now, salvation today, in direct contradiction to the monstrous doctrine that death is a necessary preliminary, is the end and aim, the test, the function, and the message of Christianity. Is this an evil teaching? Peter's words, it will be remembered, were uttered in reference to the healing of the impotent man. His conception of salvation was no theoretical or visionary one. He and the cripple who had sat for alms at the Beautiful gate must have realized that salvation according to Christianity was no post-mortem condition of bliss, but a demonstration that God is indeed a very present help in trouble.

Christian Science affirms that the same power for salvation is available today. How? By the power of Christ, the knowledge of the truth. Peter once said to a man who had been paralyzed for eight years, "Æneas, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole;" and the man found it was so. Now, it could not have been the mere words, any more than the personality of the speaker, that had healed him. What could have exercised the power but the thought that Peter held, the knowledge of Truth? And what was this but letting that Mind govern him which was also in Christ Jesus? What but realizing the absolute truth about man's eternal spiritual existence, man made in the image and likeness of God, His child, subject only to His perfect law of omnipotent love? Christian Science is teaching men that this same understanding may be attained today, and that as it is attained it is manifested by our overcoming the evil which has dominated mankind through our material beliefs, for we learn that these beliefs, the great world-dream that there is or can be any inherent reality or power in what is unlike omnipotent God, Spirit, constitute the one evil or the evil one, Satan, branded forever by our Lord as a liar. And what is a liar but that which would persuade us to believe what is not instead of what is? And what is it that persuades us that matter is reality? Our material senses, which can tell us nothing of God, the supreme reality.

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