Article November 19, 1910 Issue

It is to be feared that the new Crusaders are deficient in...

Frederick Dixon

London Times

It is to be feared that the new Crusaders are deficient in the qualities essential to their undertaking. They need backbone, they are deplorably indifferent to the teaching of history, and they are devoid of any sense of humor. It is impossible to dive, within the limits of a letter, into the category of misconceptions, stated without proof and maintained without evidence, which their latest recruit, your contributor "Churchwoman," offers to your readers as a serious criticism of Christian Science. The long quotation she gives from Mrs. Eddy's "Miscellaneous Writings" will, however, serve as an excellent test, as it is proof positive that she has never understood in the least the distinction drawn in Christian Science between the real and the unreal, the absolute and the relative, the spiritual and the material; yet on that distinction depends the understanding of the passage she has so completely misapprehended.

In teaching Christian Science Mrs. Eddy has pointed out, with the utmost care, the difference between the spiritual man, the image and likeness of God, and the sinning race of Adam. The first is the real man, reflecting the qualities of the divine Mind; the second is the human counterfeit, reflecting the passions of mortal mind, itself the negation of divine Mind. Now, whether the world at large recognizes this or not, it is made clear in the Bible. The 1st chapter of Genesis, known sometimes as the priestly and sometimes as the Elohistic document, contains an account of creation which differs completely from that, known sometimes as the primitive and sometimes as the Jehovistic, contained in the 2d chapter. Mrs. Eddy has been insisting on this for upward of forty years, and insisting on it from the standpoint, not merely of historical criticism, but of practical Christianity. The two accounts, she has explained in Science and Health, lie side by side for those who will read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them.

The common-sense critic has been peculiarly humorous on this subject and quite as peculiarly ill-informed. To make this plain, it is only necessary to refer to the writings of a great scholar, himself a champion of the accuracy of the Bible, Professor Sayce. The reverence of the Israelites for the primitive document in Genesis did not, he writes, prevent them from accepting another symbolic narrative which embodied more advanced truth, nor did the acceptance of the later narrative cause them to cast away the elder Scripture,—"the two were placed side by side." The elder narrative, he explains, was frankly anthropomorphic, the later narrative contained "a wonderful spiritual discrimination and insight." The earlier narrative, he maintains, had all the elements of polytheistic superstition; the later narrative, on the other hand, is "a noble and simple declaration of the making of all things by God, who is One, holy and benevolent." The later document, he concludes, was intended to supersede the elder document and to suppress the anthropomorphic narratives. Prejudice, however, was too strong, and the compilers of the complete Pentateuch had to rest content with placing the spiritual narrative beside the anthropomorphic, with the intention that the anthropomorphism of the one should be corrected and interpreted according to the more enlightened views of the latter. If Professor Sayce is not, from the point of view of Christian Science, a Daniel come to judgment, it would be difficult to say what all this means.

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