Article December 21, 1912 Issue

A very little trouble would have saved our critic, the...

William J. Bonnin

Accrington (England) Observer

A very little trouble would have saved our critic, the vicar, from committing himself to such statements as that Christian Science denied the personality of God, the sonship of Christ Jesus, his death and resurrection, and others of a like character. If would-be critics of Christian Science would go for their facts to those who have genuinely studied the subject, or to authoritative publications upon it, instead of to the violent and ill-informed diatribes of its opponents, they would be fairer both to themselves and to those they address. Christian Science definitely teaches the infinite spiritual personality of God and the eternal sonship of Christ. It teaches that Christ Jesus triumphed over the human experience called death, and that his resurrection proved the great fact of eternal life. The tenets of Christian Science are plainly stated in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy, the text-book of Christian Science, and there is really no excuse for misrepresenting them.

The critic's fault-finding might probably be traced to a source which is responsible for most of the unfriendly criticism passed upon Christian Science, and that is the inability or unwillingness to distinguish between absolute and relative truth, and the consequent judgment of the statements of the one by the standards of the other. The distinction is of paramount importance in Christian Science, for Christian Science may be said to be the Science of that absolute truth the knowledge of which the Founder of Christianity promised should make the race free. The translation, as it were, of this absolute truth about existence and what exists, into human material terms, in other words, the human material concept of things, is quite a different matter, and the fundamental teaching of Christian Science is that, in relation to the positive truth of spiritual reality, or absolute truth, this human sense concept is negative in nature, spurious, and unreal. Within the realm of this false human concept there are relatively true and untrue, relatively good and evil human experiences, and Christian Science does not for a moment teach that sin and death seem to be real and true experiences in that realm. But that does not in any way conflict with its teaching that in absolute truth, in the sight of God, evil is a falsity without power or presence. Evil is in fact just what Jesus said it was, a lie. It is the lie or untruth about the truth of the omnipresence of God, good, and the way to destroy it is the way to destroy any deception, namely, by knowing the truth.

The healing in Christian Science is not by any means the outcome of a blind faith. It is the demonstration of a fuller measure of knowledge of the truth of being, the overcoming of what is after all false belief, by understanding, by the bringing to naught (in the words of Paul) of the things that are by the things that are not, i.e., to the human material sense. The prayer that heals is a realization of the truth. Christ Jesus knew the truth in its fulness, and that knowledge was the reflection of the one Mind that is God. To him the things which are seen were temporal and unreal, and the things which are not seen were the real and eternal. He proved the truth of his teaching of God's allness by the destruction of all that was unlike God. His healing was the proof of his teaching, and he plainly taught that his followers should continue so to prove it. The critic would argue that we are to take the absence of any express prohibition of the use of material remedies as a direction to rely upon them, an argument which will hardly convince. The Master himself used no such means, nor did the apostles, and it is a bold thing to imply that there is a better method of healing which they knew not how to employ, but desired later generations to discover and make use of. And there is, moreover, the command to take no thought as to what we eat and drink, or for the body, which is rather hard to reconcile with the teaching that we should look to drugs for life.

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