Article March 11, 1911 Issue

The universe is real and is God's creation

Alfred Farlow

Boston (Mass.) Times

The universe is real and is God's creation. What we need is to understand it as God made it and as it really is Christian Science is destroying sin and its consequences by first giving its adherents a corrected view of God, man, and the universe, and then insisting that the deportment of the individual shall be in accordance therewith. In other words, Christian Science presents first a correct understanding of God. This constitutes an understanding of what the individual needs to do or be in order to be like God and thus win the harmony which belongs to God's children.

Science is correct knowledge, that which is true. We insist that the Master's declaration, "God is a Spirit," is true; that the deduction which Christian Science draws from this premise, namely, that the creation is spiritual, is also true. Therefore, these premises are scientific. They are Christian because they are the teaching of Christ Jesus. Hence the propriety of the term Christian Science. There is no authority for restricting the term science to materiality. There is something to know about God, and that something is true and scientific. While Christian Science affirms that sin, sickness, and death are no part of the "very good" things which the Scriptures declare were made by God, and since it is true, as the Scriptures teach, that there is nothing made that God did not make, we cannot escape the conclusion that these human evils have only a mythical existence. However, we do not hope to rid ourselves of these by merely ignoring them. On the contrary, they must be grappled with and overcome through divine power, and sin will never become unreal to the individual until he ceases to sin, ceases to deport himself according to his belief that sin is real. One does not do wrong because he believes there is nothing in it, but because he believes there is something in it. The sinner must be convinced that there is no pleasure or profit in evil, and then he will cease from sin.

We do not claim that Mrs. Eddy has added anything to the Bible, but that she has discovered the precious truths of God's Word which heretofore have apparently not been clearly understood. We do not rest this claim upon a mere ipse dixit. We point to the fruitage of Christian Science practice as the only reasonable proof of its divinity. If our critic will consider the teaching of Christian Science apart from supernaturalism, it will appear more rational to him. In keeping with the admonition to "render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's," we must credit Mrs. Eddy with the discovery of the Science of Christianity, but the question with which we are most vitally concerned is the fact that Christian Science is a revelation or emanation of the divine Mind and not a mere human opinion. It is a "final revelation" because it is the clear, unveiled truth. The understanding that Spirit, God, is pure Mind, and His creation not a species of matter, rarefied or otherwise, can never be improved upon. It is final.

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