Editorial October 26, 1912 Issue

ONLY ONE STANDARD

Archibald Mclellan

One of the best known and most vital truths of Christian Science is that embodied in the "scientific statement of being" (Science and Health, p. 468). Sunday after Sunday, in the hundreds of Christian Science churches all over the world, there is read to the assembled congregations, at the close of the service, Mrs. Eddy's inspired and inspiring declaration that "there is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all;" and its clear and logical conclusion that "Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual." This sharply defined and unchanging distinction between the spiritual and material is again emphasized on page 476 of the text-book, where Mrs. Eddy writes: "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, appears to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick."

How important to the welfare of Christian Scientists our Leader deemed a thorough understanding of the immortal truth voiced by the apostle John: "Beloved, now are we the sons of God," is shown in her answer to a question on this point (Sentinel, Sept. 3, 1910), in which she says: "You can never demonstrate spirituality until you declare yourself to be immortal and understand that you are so. Christian Science is absolute; it is neither behind the point of perfection nor advancing toward it; it is at this point and must be practised therefrom. Unless you fully perceive that you are the child of God, hence perfect, you have no Principle to demonstrate and no rule for its demonstration. By this I do not mean that mortals are the children of God,—far from it. In practising Christian Science you must state its Principle correctly, or you forfeit your ability to demonstrate it."

If the "correct view of man healed the sick" in Jesus' day, it stands to reason that the same correct view must be just as efficacious today. It also stands to reason that, unless error is as real as truth, an incorrect view of man would not have healed the sick then, nor will it do so now. The lesson of this is that it is incumbent upon Christian Scientists, if they would prevent sickness, to keep before them at all times this "correct view of man;" that they cannot be divided between two opinions of man's true being,—one to be divided to when they are sick and the other when they are well. The trouble that some Christian Scientists seem to have is in the failure in their own thought to distinguish between man as God's idea and the mortal concept of man which claims that he is sick, sinning, and dying. To regard man as mortal because in belief he seems to manifest mortality is a mistake, and inevitably results in the setting up of two standards.

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