In a recent issue of your paper there is a report of an address given in Tor parish church. It is headed, "A Terrible Creed." I quite agree that if what the reverend gentleman said in the faintest degree represented the teaching of Christian Science, it would deserve that title. The fact, however, unfortunately is that he has simply followed the example which is as old as that of the Quietist opponents of Confucius—of erecting a figure of a creed, of which he is not only ignorant, but to his own misapprehension of which he is naturally opposed, for the purpose of gaining a decidedly bloodless victory by knocking it down.

This critic's first objection to Christian Science is that it pays more attention to the welfare of men's bodies than to their spiritual welfare. Unluckily for this argument, he is forced to admit that Christian Scientists, in their ministrations to the sick, are following the example of Jesus of Nazareth. It might have been thought that this would have made him pause to consider if he was not making a mistake, but this does not appear to have occurred to him. The truth, of course, is that Christian Scientists have adopted the healing of disease as well as the healing of sin in accordance with the divine command to do this. The one is, however, dependent on the other. You cannot make a man a better man without making him more healthy, and the only way to make him more healthy is to make him a better man. This constitutes the true healing of sickness.

A doctor, it is true, succeeds frequently in curing people without in any case attempting to improve them morally. In the eyes of Christian Science, this is not healing; it is simply getting a man's body well and having him in a position to be sick again the next moment. Christian Science healing requires that a man's physical ills should be overcome by giving him a truer understanding of divine Principle. If this is accomplished, not only is the specific sickness healed, but he is left with some understanding of the truth which Jesus declared would make a man free, to protect himself against sickness in the future. It is this intimate connection between sickness and sin which drew from Jesus the wonderful saying, "Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say, Arise, and walk?"

This may serve to explain the Christian Science position with regard to sin, which the critic has altogether failed to comprehend. The Christian Scientist does not say that sin is not a reality to the human consciousness. He says, in the words of Mrs. Eddy (p. 110 of Science and Health), that it is an "awful unreality." Awful, because of the hideous tragedies and misery to which it leads in human existence, and an unreality—fortunately for mankind—because it is not sent of God. Before starting to criticize Christian Science, the reverend gentleman might at least have acquainted himself with the sense in which words are used in Christian Science. He might as reasonably attack natural science with a complete disregard of its definitions as attack Christian Science without having mastered the sense in which the word "real" is used in it.

By "real" the Christian Scientist means God-created, and so eternal. That which is created by God is eternal and indestructible, and if the critic is prepared to make this admission with respect to sin, then he may regard it as real. The Christian Scientist, however, regards sin as something absolutely outside the divine Mind—as a lie necessarily bound to be detected, and so exposed and destroyed; therefore he speaks of it as unreal. Probably in his daily efforts to heal sickness and overcome sin, he sees the human scope of sin from even a broader standpoint than does this critic. He sees the ordinary sins of commission, which the entire world admits as sin, but he sees, also, those sins of omission the significance of which the world is not apt to appreciate. If, for instance, mortal man had not omitted to realize that the only reality and power is God and the spiritual creation, he would never have begun to believe in the lie of sin, sickness, and death. Writing to the Romans, Paul said that death entered the world through sin. If death entered the world through sin, sickness certainly entered in the same way, and unless this clergyman is prepared to admit that sin, sickness, and death are the creation of God, he is bound to admit that they are unreal. If they are the creation of God they are part of the divine consciousness, and no power on this earth can blot them out of that consciousness.

This may help your readers to understand the sense in which matter is described as unreal in Christian Science. The critic evidently imagines that if there is no matter there can be no sickness. In other words, his philosophy is out of date; it is that of Dr. Johnson, who stamped on matter by way of proving it real, without realizing that if matter were unreal the whole act of stamping was an equal unreality. In the dry humor of Huxley's phrase, he proved matter to be unreal by stamping on it, or some such irrelevant proceeding. Christian Science accepts the teaching of all the idealistic thinkers in natural science in so far as it admits that all material phenomena are either the subjective condition of the human mind or the result of energy. If this is a ridiculous position, it can only be said that it is a position which has been shared by half the great thinkers of the world, from Plato to Berkeley, and from Berkeley down to Lord Kelvin.

At this point, however, Christian Science severs its connection with the teaching of the idealistic schools of natural science, and accepts, without question, the idealism of the New Testament. The idealism of the New Testament was expressed in the phrase of Jesus, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit," and that "the flesh profiteth nothing." It is absolutely inconceivable that God should have created something which profiteth nothing; therefore it is perfectly clear that He did not create either the flesh or, consequently, that which is born of it. The creation of God is the spiritual universe, and Christian Science insists that all material phenomena represent nothing but the negation of spiritual truth. That is an explanation of the unreality of matter which is about as far from anything our critic has yet begun to imagine, as could well be conceived.

Finally, the gentleman asks, if prayer is sufficient to heal the sick, why the prayers of those who love the patients are not of more value than the prayers of paid Christian Scientists. He does not seem to observe that he has, in the earlier part of his discourse, given away this part of his case. He had declared that Christian Science was progressing all over the world because it healed men's bodies. If it heals men's bodies, and the prayers of those who are personally attached to the sick do not, the critic's definition of love must be a little out of joint. The fact is that the greatest love which can be shown to mankind is that realization of the truth which makes men free from sin, disease, and death, and it is because of this that Mrs. Eddy writes (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 358), "The student who heals by teaching and teaches by healing will graduate under divine honors."

This being so, the clergyman's sneer about Christian Scientists being paid is a little out of place. Jesus commanded his disciples, when he sent them out, to preach the gospel and to heal the sick, and he bade them, as they went, enter into the houses of those whom they helped and remain there until they left, telling them to shake the dust off their feet against those who failed to receive them. The simple customs of the east are an impossibility to complicated western society, and so the method of entering into the houses of those you help has been changed to payment of another description, and that there is nothing objectionable in receiving this payment, from a Christian point of view, is perfectly clear from the words of Paul: "If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things?" This critic, as a clergyman, receives a stipend, which he has presumably no scruples in accepting, for preaching the gospel. The medical men of the world naturally and properly receive fees for healing the sick. In the opinion of this critic, the point at which it is improper to receive payment is only reached in the case of the Christian Scientists, who is endeavoring to fulfil, not part, but the whole of the divine command to preach the gospel and to heal the sick, knowing, as Jesus said, that "the laborer is worthy of his hire."