Article December 9, 1911 Issue

In a recent issue of your paper there is a report of an...

Frederick Dixon

Torquay (Eng.) Directory

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?"

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