Article July 22, 1911 Issue

The sermon printed in your issue of the 28th ultimo...

Frederick Dixon

Belfast (Ireland) Witness

The sermon printed in your issue of the 28th ultimo deals with a subject which looms very large in human thought at the present moment, and which the clerical critic has discovered it is impossible to brush aside with an obiter dictum. Eight or ten years ago this gentleman preached a sermon in criticism of Christian Science, and in it he attacked a line of reasoning which to a very considerable extent the world is admitting today. It would be difficult, indeed, to exaggerate the change that has come over human thought during the last decade. The critic, face to face with the conclusions of prominent orthodox thinkers, finds himself obliged to revise his former point of view. Every revision, however, of this point of view he will find will betray him into more hopelessly illogical propositions, until he is content to go the whole way.

Calvinism is a distinctly logical conclusion, however much people may revolt from its premises. Materialism, at the other extreme, is equally logical in its reasoning, however much men may in turn revolt from the conclusions drawn from its premises. Christian Science, again, is supremely logical, no matter what criticism may be brought to bear upon it. Christian Science, however, has this advantage over Calvinism, that it is not content with dogma, but goes forward to push its reasoning not merely to a logical, but to a demonstrable conclusion. It is this that entitles it to be called Science, and so brings it in accord with the teaching of the New Testament, since every one knows that the Greek phrase, epignosis tou theou, translated in the epistles as knowledge of God, should be translated, full, exact, that is to say, scientific knowledge of God, and so of Truth.

This, when it is understood, was the significance of the miracle of the New Testament. The word translated miracle never had a supernatural significance. It means, as it has always meant, either an act of power or a proof. It was an act of power, in so much as it demonstrated the omnipotence of good, and it was a proof inasmuch as it showed that the claim that good was omnipotent was no mere ethical ipse dixit, but a scientific fact. Jesus came preaching to the world the gospel which he summed up in the phrase. "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Now, the word translated repent means literally something causing conviction afterward, and so a change of mind. As this change of mind took place, men realized that the old theory of evil, which had led in the past to the worship of evil deities to the attribution of power to evil, was a misconception, and changing their mind from this to an understanding of the allness of God and so of good, they found the spiritual law, which they were able to demonstrate not only in the overcoming of sin, but in the healing of sorrow and sickness, and of all that was unlike God, good.

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