Article September 11, 1909 Issue

Your correspondent states that "all true Christian make...

Capt. H. C. F. Cumberlege

Aldershot (Eng.) News

Your correspondent states that "all true Christian make the Word of God their sole rule of faith and practice, and hold that it contains all things necessary to man's salvation," and then goes on to say, "but Mrs. Eddy, in Science and Health, asserts the Bible to be incomplete." Mrs. Eddy has certainly written a book which discovers to the student a deep spiritual meaning in the Bible texts which clears away the seeming inconsistencies that have puzzled mankind for so long, but she specifically quotes the Bible as her only authority, and writes on page 497, "We take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life." This quotation proves that the teaching of Christian Science is fundamentally in complete agreement with your correspondent's own definition of true Christianity. Therefore the only possible point at which a difference between the two can seem to arise must be where their respective interpretations of "the Word" diverge.

Your readers will no doubt realize that the clergy of all denominations expound the Word of God from the pulpit every Sunday, but is it considered that they thereby belittle the completeness of the Bible? Because Mrs. Eddy has put her interpretation in a book instead of continuing to voice it from a pulpt, will any thoughtful man consider that her mode of exposition furnishes cause for complaint any more than the mode followed by the clergy? On the contrary, he will no doubt agree that the following point brought out by the another of Science and Health shows very clearly the great need of humanity for an intelligent explanation of the Scriptures: "The most distinguished theologians in Europe and America agree that the Scriptures have both a spiritual and literal meaning," and "the manifest mistakes in the ancient versions; the thirty thousand different readings in the Old Testament, and the three hundred thousand in the New,—these facts show how a mortal and material sense stole into the divine record, with its own hue darkening to some extent the inspired pages" (Science and Health, pp. 320 and 139).

Well may the seeker after truth echo today Pilate's famous question, "What is truth?" when he reviews these multitudinous renderings of the text of the Bible, for it is obvious that in each instance only one translation can be strictly accurate. Had Christian Science nothing but human opinion to back it, it would have no more claim to be regarded as the truth than any other denomination. But Christian Science echoes the words of the apostle James: "What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? ... show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works." "And the prayer of faith shall save the sick."

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