Article September 24, 1910 Issue

The letter of our critic, published in your issue of the...

Frederick Dixon

Bedford (Eng.) Record

The letter of our critic, published in your issue of the 27th inst., discloses extremely little beyond the fact that the writer is more than usually intolerant in his hatred of Christian Science, and more than usually violent in his manner of giving expression to that hatred. If the mere stringing together of unpleasant epithets constituted argument, the writer would have some claim to be considered a thinker; as, however, they unfortunately are a proof of nothing except want of control, it is a little difficult to discover in his letter exactly what he is taking exception to.

He quotes, for instance, the famous warning of Paul to Timothy, to avoid "science falsely so called," and ingenuously injects the word Christian, so as to make it read, Christian Science falsely so-called. He forgets that this particular verse has been used against every thinker of the last century by half the people from whom they have happened to differ. It is one of those phrases which may be used by any one hard pressed for an argument, and it has been taken full advantage of by every one in such straits. Again, he talks of the "learned label Christian Science." He forgets that if absolute truth is not Christian, Christianity is nothing at all, and that if truth is not scientific, there is no such thing as science.

The word has apparently a terror for him which it did not have for the writers of the New Testament books, or for their translators. Whether he is aware of it or not, the phrase is used both by Peter and Paul in the words epignosis tou theou, which mean full, exact, that is, scientific knowledge of God, and it is used by Wyclif in his translation of the Gospel of Luke in the phrase, "He shall show science and health to his people; into remission of their sins." With apparently lively satisfaction, he goes on to consign the whole movement to the reprobation of God, and to explain that every Christian Scientist is in peril of "perdition reserved for ungodly men, the certainty of which cannot for one moment be called in question." By this time, he has reached such a paroxysm of indignation that he has forgotten to explain exactly wherein Christian Science offends, and so ends his letter without having impressed his readers with anything except the interesting fact that he disapproves of Christian Science, and, therefore, that it is of the devil.

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