Article October 7, 1911 Issue

Christian Science does not teach that mortal man has no...

C. R. Munro

Port Hope (Ont.) Times

Christian Science does not teach that mortal man has no body, as our critic seems to think it does, but rather that the material body which decays and dies is not the real man which the Bible says is made in God's likeness. God being Spirit, His image and His likeness must be spiritual. Neither does Christian Science teach that the material body is immortal, but rather does it agree with St. Paul when he says: "The things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal;" also the statement, "They that are in the flesh cannot please God," is clear evidence that the fleshly or mortal man is not the real man made in God's likeness.

Christian Science does not teach that sin and disease are imaginary, nor that there is no sin and disease to be overcome in our mortal experience. Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," the text-book of Christian Science: "If at present satisfied with wrongdoing, we must learn to loathe it," and again, "Remember that mankind must sooner or later, either by suffering or by Science, be convinced of the error that is to be overcome" (p.240). One of the tenets of Christian Science, as given in its text-book, is as follows: "We acknowledge God's forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal. But the belief in sin is punished so long as the belief lasts" (Ibid., p. 497). Christian Science teaches that both sin and disease are no part of the perfect creation of God which He pronounced good; hence, not being God-created, they are not eternal, not real, as the term is understood in Christian Science.

Christian Scientists will fully endorse our critic's statement that Christ's religion is "a religion for the salvation of the body as well as the soul." In fact, Christian Scientists have been criticized many times for insisting on this very thing, viz., that Jesus' teachings are applicable to all conditions of life, and that God's power is able to save from sickness as well as sin. But Christian Scientists go farther than merely believing in God's power; they actually trust God for all things, for salvation from bodily pain and disease as well as from sin. Until we do this we are not truly, in the fullest sense, Christian. Many are willing to trust in God to save them from sin, but when troubled with physical sickness they trust more to an inanimate drug than to omnipotent Spirit. But this was not Jesus' way, and Christian Scientists are trying to the best of their ability to follow absolutely as he taught.

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