Article December 9, 1911 ISSUE

A press despatch quotes a prominent Unitarian minister...

John M. Dean

Memphis (Tenn.) Commercial Appeal

A press despatch quotes a prominent Unitarian minister as declaring Christian Science to be "a menace to the country and to national life" and "a fanaticism." Such a far-fetched denunciation of a sister religion is particularly surprising coming, as it does, from a member of a nomination which was only recently compelled to resent similar charges made by narrow ecclesiastics in connection with Mr. Taft's presidential candidacy, he being a Unitarian. How the nation (regardless of politics) resented such bigotry is a matter of history, though this critic seems not to have profited by its lesson.

The strength of a nation can be measured only by the strength of its citizenry, and the true strength of the individual citizen can be gaged only by his ideals. Thus that nation is the strongest whose people have the highest standards of morality and living. If Christian Science destroys these ideals, it is indeed a "menace;" but if it upholds them, it can only be a tower of strength to any nation, and its influence on the individual units composing that nation must inevitably tend toward every essential element of greatness. Can any person truthfully charge Christian Science with making worse citizens of its adherents? Its ideal government is comprised in the golden rule, and no higher standard has ever been placed before men, nor indeed can be. During momentary excitement some of the brethren of other faiths seem ofttimes to lose their perspective, and thus to conceive the loosening grasp of some particular creed to mean the crumbling away of Christianity itself. Such critics fairly epitomize Sam Jones' scathing analysis of those who confuse "churchianity with Christianity."

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