Article November 26, 1910 Issue

In discussing the question of Christian Science it is absolutely...

Frederick Dixon

Belfast (Ire.) Telegraph

In discussing the question of Christian Science it is absolutely necessary to keep clearly in mind the definitions which have been adopted by Mrs. Eddy. If this is for one moment forgotten, critics embark on a process which can only end in distortion. In the attack on Christian Science delivered before the Church Congress in Belfast, our critic, as reported, started with a complete misapprehension of what Mrs. Eddy means by real, ends in committing himself to a denunciation of something which she has never taught.

The word real is used in Christian Science to represent God and the spiritual creation. The consequence is that when this critic explained that Christian Scientist taught not that the mind had power over the body, but that there was no body, he was involving himself in the most complete muddle imaginable. As a matter of fact it is the idealism of natural science which declares that the body is controlled by the mind, but that the body is not real, as anybody who knows anything about the teaching of that school from Berkeley to the present day must be aware. Berkeley taught that the body as matter was purely a subjective condition of mind, and so unreal; Professor Ostwald teaches that matter is the result of energy, and that of energy alone reality can be predicated. Here then we have the first and the last of the school of natural science idealists, in modern times, announcing the very theory which seemed to cause so much amusement at the congress.

Now what Christian Science does teach is that matter is the subjective condition of mortal mind, and is entirely controlled by it. So far it agrees with the teaching of natural science. At this point, however, it severs itself completely from that teaching and adopts the idealism of Jesus—"That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit."

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