Article February 26, 1910 Issue

Christian Scientists do not boast that "Christian Science...

William J. Bonnin

Blackpool (Eng) Herald

Christian Scientists do not boast that "Christian Science has turned Christianity upside down." What this scientific Christianity shows to be in need of straightening is a Christianity which disregards the very test that its Founder imposed, the test of works and demonstration. Jesus was constantly demonstrating the truth of his teaching by those manifestations of God's perfect law of harmony and love that we call miracles, and which we have been taught to look upon as supernatural and impossible for man, instead of as divinely natural and the legitimate outcome of a knowledge of the truth. Jesus implicitly promised that whoever believed on him, or, in other words, accepted and understood the truth he taught about God and His is creation, should do the works that he did. There is no question what those works are. They were set out by Jesus himself to John's disciples who came asking for proof that the Messiah was come. "By their fruits ye shall know them," becomes in Christian Science a declaration of the utmost significance.

The reverend gentleman says that Christian Science is based on a false conception of reality. Now it is just the Christian Science concept of reality that one gains from a meditation upon the understanding of Paul's words to the Corinthians. "While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." Which are real? Both cannot be. It the preacher insists that the materialistic view of reality is the correct one, we must agree to differ. It is, however, by the raising of his consciousness above the mere materialism of sense testimony into some measure of an understanding of the immutable love of the everpresent God, that the Christian Scientist is enabled to that degree to accomplish the healing of sin and sickness in obedience to the Master's mandate. And in ever-increasing numbers men of all ranks and classes, rich and poor, professional and artisan, Christian and agnostic, are today gaining an understanding of this teaching reality, are proving it to be true, and are rejoicing for the blessings that follow in its train.

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