Article June 3, 1911 Issue

In the "scientific statement of being," which will be found...

E. J. Simpson—Ardmore, Okla.

Ardmoreite

In the "scientific statement of being," which will be found in Science and Health on page 468, we read as follows: "Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal." There is certainly no ambiguity in this declaration. On the contrary, the statement as made by Mrs. Eddy is so positively divorced from the complex verbiage commonly employed by philosophical writers, that no one should mistake the meaning. Paul in writing to the Corinthians was not more explicit in drawing a line of demarcation between the temporal (the material) and the eternal (the spiritual). We read: "For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." Again, we read: "While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." Now where could any more perfect correlative be found to Scripture reading than is found in the declaration made by Mrs. Eddy?

Our critic is mistaken when he thinks that Christian Science teaches that sin and transgression are not recognized as something to be overcome. On page 240 of Science and Health we read: "If at present satisfied with wrongdoing, we must learn to loathe it," and again, "Remember that mankind must sooner or later, either by suffering or by Science, be convinced of the error that is to be overcome." In the tenets of Christian Science, which may be found on page 497 of Science and Health, we find in section three these words: "We acknowledge God's forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal. But the belief in sin is punished so long as the belief lasts."

Christian Scientists do not believe in the reality of sin or of discords of any kind, because God did not make them and because they are not eternal. As God's children, His spiritual image and likeness, it is man's prerogative to manifest God-bestowed dominion and rise above the erring beliefs of sin, sickness, and death; his privilege to know that God is Love; his right to strive for that Mind "which was also in Christ Jesus," and by right living, right thinking, and right doing to manifest in gentleness and tenderness the Christ-spirit. Christian Science is a demonstrable religion, based on love; a religion which helps mankind to see there is something better than wrong-doing, something far more harmonious than the discords of human envy, malice, and unkindness.

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