Article October 29, 1910 Issue

A clergyman, whose sermon was reported in your columns,...

James D. Sherwood

Beaumont (Tex.) Enterprise

A clergyman, whose sermon was reported in your columns, says, among other things, "Jesus does not ignore the fact that we are sick. Christian Science says you are not diseased at all. It is simply a delusion of mortal mind; there is no sin, no sickness, no death."

The infinity of God is readily acknowledged by theologians. That God is infinite indicates that He is All, and that there is naught beside Him. God is Spirit, hence Spirit is the only substance, the only entity. From this premise is it presumption to relegate to the rank of unreality all that is unlike God, all that is unlike good? It is from this viewpoint that Christian Science repudiates the illegitimate claims of evil seen in the many forms of sin, sickness, and death, whenever and wherever it is claimed that these evils proceed from God, the only creator. If evil exists, it must proceed from God, else God is not the only creator; but God is the only creator, and all that is real God made, and all that God made He pronounced good; hence one is justified in refusing to believe in the reality of anything that is so unlike God. That sin, disease, and death, as appearances of evil, are constantly in evidence in the world of sense, is acknowledged; but that they proceed from God we deny, and we hold that all that is real is comprehended in the good works of a good God.

If Christ Jesus had believed sickness to be true, he would have believed it to be the work of God, and hence that it was right for a man to be sick. In that event he would have found himself working against the will of God every time he destroyed sickness and healed the sick; but on the contrary he knew that sickness was the phenomenon of false belief and that it would vanish with the appearance of the right idea concerning God and man. He said of the woman who was bowed down with rheumatism that Satan had bound her, and he lifted her thought out of the belief that she was suffering punishment inflicted by an angry God, and this immediately healed her. In like manner Christian Science is today presenting to the waiting thought of suffering humanity an abiding conviction of the loving-kindness of a good God, His omnipresence and omnipotence, and thereby it is demolishing sin and disease at the same time and by the same spiritual process.

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