Article June 11, 1910 Issue

The letter signed "A Student" in a recent issue, exhibits...

Frederick Dixon

Battersea (Eng.) Borough News

The letter signed "A Student" in a recent issue, exhibits in a rather remarkable way the readiness of the human mind to indulge in criticism. Christian Science is the religion of a very large body of cultivated and thoughtful men and women, who may be trusted not to have reached their conclusions without having been confronted with obvious and superficial difficulties which must occur to everybody on first reading any subject with which they are unacquainted. Yet here is a gentleman who, having "some time since looked through" the text-book of Christian Science, and "having read the report of a lecture in your columns," which report was of course necessarily curtailed, hastens to give utterance to his feelings in a criticism signed as by "A Student." Surely if we are to accept such methods we shall require a new definition of the term student.

The critic begins with a little wholesale denunciation. Christian Science, it appears, is "unscientific, unphilosophic, inhuman, and unscriptural." To feel that you are so much better trained morally and intellectually than hundreds of thousands of your neighbors, and to be able to speak of them in terms of such mingled certainty and contempt, must really almost be to succeed in adding a cubit to your stature. Some day the critic will discover that one reason for the persistent success of the Christian Science movement is that its members devote their time and their energies entirely to demonstrating the truth of their own views, and never attack those of their neighbor.

Now, when the critic explains that Christian Science is unscriptural he is merely explaining that the Christian Science view of the Scriptures is not his view; in plain English, that it is unorthodox. Orthodoxy, however, unfortunately for him, is one of the most difficult terms to define. The only thing that can be said on the subject with any certainty is that the heterodoxy of one century is quite secure of being the orthodoxy of the next. Still, whatever views may be held as to what is Scriptural and what is not, there are certain passages in the Scriptures which no amount of ingenuity can explain away, and among these are the passages expressing that fundamental idea in the teaching of Christ Jesus explained by him in the words, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also." That is a "test" instituted not by Parliament nor by a particular church, but by the Founder of Christianity himself. It is a little remarkable that the church which insists on the application of this in its full significance, is the church whose teaching your critic elects to condemn as unscriptural.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

The letter signed "A Student" in a recent issue, exhibits...

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access