Article September 2, 1911 Issue

Christian Science does not teach that sin, sickness, and...

George A. Law

Bridgeport (Conn.) Post

Christian Science does not teach that sin, sickness, and death are not a part of the experience of this mortal existence, and no one knows better than a Christian Scientist how real pain and suffering seem to the one afficted. As most Christian Scientists have been healed of such conditions and restored to health and usefulness, they know whereof they speak. The teaching of Christian Science is that sin, disease, and death do not emanate from God, are not in the divine order of things, and are therefore to be contended with and gotten rid of. Thus they are not permanent, immortal, as are the things of God,—God's creation,—but are fleeting, temporal, abnormal; and it is in this sense that in Christian Science they are regarded as unreal. Paul says, "Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not;" "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 seen are eternal."

If sin, sickness, and death were of God's creating, they would exist under the infinite spiritual law. Then it would be impossible to destroy or eliminate them and men would face a condition impossible to cope with. Indeed Jesus' own works of healing would not have been possible of accomplishment. But Jesus taught how to obtain freedom from these disturbers of the God-given peace and happiness of man. He declared death an enemy to be overcome. the last enemy to be overcome, as Paul puts it. And Jesus overcame death; thus proving man to be immortal, the image and likeness of God, with dominion over all things.

Mrs. Eddy has never claimed that this age would witness the demonstration over death. Referring to death in her work entitled "Unity of Good" (p. 40), Mrs. Eddy says: "To say that you and I, as mortals, will not enter this dark shadow of material sense, called death, is to assert what we have not proved; but man in Science never dies. Material sense, or the belief of life in matter, must perish, in order to prove man deathless."

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