Article March 11, 1911 Issue

Our critic, in his frank and fearless inquiry into the...

Olcott Haskell

San Jose (Cal.) Mercury

Our critic, in his frank and fearless inquiry into the nature of prayer, correctly states the position of the Christian Scientists, who hold it to be the natural result of God's law for sickness as well as sin to disappear before the light of spiritual understanding. He shows that law to be law must be unchanging, and he points out that the effect of prayer is not to change God, but to change us to a clearer perception of the moral and spiritual facts.

Mrs. Eddy explains in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 573) that "what the human mind terms matter and spirit indicates states and stages of consciousness;" and so it is that the healing of disease through Christian Science results from a clearer perception of God and of the perfection of His creation. The change is not in God, nor in His universe, but in our perception of that universe. Jesus illustrated the transforming power of prayer by healing the sick and reforming the sinful; and he explained this method to his disciples in the simple words: "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Our critic reminds us that "God's unchangeableness is our security," and this is being proven today through a repetition of the same works as those recorded of Jesus and his disciples. One of the chief hindrances to a universal acceptance of these views seems to be a remnant of the hypothesis which conceived of God's universe as divided into two parts, with God in one and a material man in the other; but such a concept is fast fading, and men are awakening to the recognition of a universe wholly good, and of a God who is Principle—even divine Life, Truth, and Love.

Students of Christian Science are not encouraged to accept its teachings in blind faith, but they are taught to prove each statement for themselves, in accordance with the Scriptural injunction: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." It is this individual and practical "acknowledgment of the perfection of the infinite Unseen" which, as Mrs. Eddy says in "Unity of Good" (p. 7), "confers a power nothing else can."

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