Article November 2, 1912 Issue

In the printed report of the Bishop of Liverpool's sermon...

William J. Bonnin

Southport (Eng.) Visiter

In the printed report of the Bishop of Liverpool's sermon to the Medical Congress, the preacher, after a preliminary bestowal of uncomplimentary epithets upon Christian Science, declared that it contained a grain of truth. The epithets, entirely unsupported as they were by any attempt to justify them, one need hardly trouble to controvert. People are growing less and less likely to be convinced by mere adjectives. When, however, such an authority attempts to explain the truth of Christian Science, a good crop of misconceptions may easily arise.

The power of the spirit "under certain conditions to operate on the body with remarkable physical results," which the bishop declared to constitute this grain of truth, is a crude and inadequate rendering of the grain of Christian Science teaching which a beginner is often able to assimilate with small effort. Unfortunately, instead of pressing on to discover the scientific truth underlying such a stupendous fact, there are those who are content to admit it and go no farther. Such a quest, however, leads to the very secret of health and happiness, and it is one which reveals Christianity to be a scientific plan of salvation for humanity from the evils that oppress it. The bishop would say that it lies in the province of medical science to make this investigation into "the range of spiritual power and the conditions under which it worked." Christian Science teaches that it is the duty of those who believe in the power of Spirit, to manifest that power. It teaches that religion and healing are not complementary, but that they are, and were forever proved by the words and works of Jesus to be, one, indissoluble and indiscerpible.

Christian Science declares that Christianity without healing cannot be true Christianity, because it lacks the very element that its Founder declared should characterize his religion. To mankind's cry as to what disease and evil are in the general economy of things, Christian Science shows the answer of Christianity to be that they are the manifestation or expression of ignorance of one's true being, the outcome of a false sense of existence, ignorance of Truth, of God. The destruction of this ignorance is true healing, and it is effected in the only possible way, by the knowledge of Truth, When one learns that the only righteousness is true thinking or spiritual understanding, a new light is thrown on the promise, "Unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings."

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In the printed report of the Bishop of Liverpool's sermon...

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