Article November 9, 1912 Issue

Jesus said, "I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil," and...

Jno. M. Dean—Memphis, Tenn.

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Jesus said, "I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil," and then proceeded to destroy sin and sickness, thus giving an object-lesson of their unreality, well knowing the impossibility as well as the undesirability of destroying any part of God's creation, which alone is true or real. How can an absolute reality be destroyed? Such a result is unthinkable, and the force of logic drives us to the conclusion that reality is permanent, while its counterfeit unreality is alone destructible. "Whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever," and on page 186 in Science and Health Mrs. Eddy says, "If evil is as real as good, evil is also as immortal." God "made all that was made" and pronounced it good, hence evil in any form is only a false belief evolved by mortal man, and thus unreal.

We must remember, however, that counterfeits often seem very real until proven otherwise, and that sin and sickness must receive sufficient recognition in order to expose their counterfeit nature and thus destroy their seeming power. So long as mankind gives even a semblance of power to sin, so long will they be sinners, and it thus becomes true that "all [mortals] have sinned" and are sinners; and yet in the same chapter quoted by our critic, at the seventh verse, we find that "if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, ... the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin." This is in line with the command of the Master himself, "Be ye therefore perfect," and while no one of us has yet more than started in this direction, we refuse to believe that he perpetrated a fraud upon humanity by commanding the doing of impossibilities, despite a seeming remoteness fathered by a human sense of limitations.

The critic's quotation of the statement of Jesus, "They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick," is rendered in substantially the same way in Matthew ix:12, and is immediately followed by the words, "But go ye and learn what that meaneth." This is timely advice to the present critic and to all others who are presumptuous enough to use this as Scriptural endorsement of pills and plasters. The word "physician" in this text is merely a general descriptive term used for the convenience of his hearers, and purely as an illustration by the "great Physician," who never employed or recommended material remedies of any kind and whose vocabulary knew no such word as "failure." He did the works of his Father (Spirit) by purely spiritual methods, and those who rush in to use his words or deeds to bolster up an opposing theory are welcome to the extremely doubtful comfort of such an argument.

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