Editorial November 2, 1912 Issue

"HE THAT BELIEVETH."

Archibald McLellan

WITH the superficial observer, Christian Science and faith-healing are apt to be rated as one and the same, and it is for this reason that Christian Scientists are sometimes called upon the explain the difference between their practise and that which is ordinarily termed faith-cure. Many of those who ask for this explanation do so because they have been surprised to learn of the insistence by Christian Scientists that there is a difference. Investigation shows usually that these inquirers have assumed, in their judgment of Christian Science and its practise, one of two things, either that sin, sickness, and death are lawful, and of God's creation, and that Christian Scientists have a blind faith that God will set aside His own law and change His own regulation of the universe if His petitioners have sufficient faith and perseverance to bring about this result; or else that Christian Scientists simply ignore the claims of evil, and thus construct for themselves a fool's paradise which will eventually tumble about their ears.

The person who reads Science and Health with the intention of ascertaining what Mrs. Eddy's teachings are,—what Christian Science really is,—should have no difficulty in perceiving that these two prevalent, but ignorant, misconceptions of Christian Science are as far as possible from the real fact. On page 167 (lines 1 to 3) of Science and Health the author asks a question, the implied and inevitable answer to which must convince the reader that Christian Science is not faith-cure, but on the contrary is founded upon the immutability of God; that its practise is in demonstration of His unchanging law, that law of ever-present good which in its working cannot operate other than for harmony. This is unmistakably taught throughout Mrs. Eddy's writings.

As to the other misconception of Christian Science referred to, a careful study of Science and Health will show that simply to ignore the claims of evil is not to practise the Science Mrs. Eddy teaches, the Science which declares the unreality of all that is unlike good, and that evil is but a false seeming, "a liar, and the father of it," as the Master defined it; therefore it is not to be ignored, but cast out and destroyed, even as Jesus released the one so grievously tormented from the evil spirits which had seemingly taken possession of him.

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