Article July 22, 1911 Issue

Christian Science is the spiritual understanding of the...

Ezra W. Palmer

Denver (Col.) News

Christian Science is the spiritual understanding of the Holy Scriptures; it is the spirit and intent of Jesus' teachings made applicable to twentieth-century conditions. To know it, willingness to seek the Father in spirit and in truth must be paramount in the seeker, irrespective of creed or dogma. A student could never understand geometry, for instance, by studying works opposed to it, nor would this method bear fruit in astronomy, physics, or any science. It is appearent from our critic's article that his conception of the New Testament and of the life and works of Jesus differs radically from the Christian Science view-point. Christian Scientists understand that God is unchangeable, that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, that He is Love; that man is spiritual,—the sons and daughters of God,—and because God is Love and unchangeable, that all His children partake of His bounty.

They also understand that sin and disease, being unlike divine Love, are destroyed by spiritual understanding, and that this healing is not confined to a few isolated cases in the time of Jesus, but is a part of man's heritage, equally applicable to all men who seek God in the manner and method indicated by Jesus. Our critic takes the view, as I understand his view-point, of scholastic theology, that although God is unchangeable and omnipotent, that healing was miraculous, a contravention of law,—"exceptional happenings," as our critic puts it,—given only to a few merely to avouch that Christianity was all right, and then withdrawn, leaving untold millions of future generations at the mercy of sickness, plague, and pestilence. Christian Scientists do not attempt to change the critic's view of the New Testament. This is his right. They merely wish that he grant to them the same Christian courtesy.

The attempt to bolster up the claim that materia medica is consonant with Christianity by reference to the admonition of James to anoint with oil is insufficient. Anointing with oil in the Scriptures was symbolic, expressive of the outpouring of the spirit of God and showing His favor on the one so anointed. This clergyman believes the oil did the healing. If that were so, if God so ordained it, Jesus would have employed it, and that method would be in use today; but even materia medica does not so employ it. Unfortunately for our critic's contention, St. James in the next verse settles the matter quite decisively by saying, "And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up." Yet our critic declares that praying for the sick is "sheer perverseness"!

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