Article March 30, 1912 Issue

Jesus came to make men free from the material by instructing...

Charles D. Reynolds—Wolfeboro, N. H.

Granite State News

Jesus came to make men free from the material by instructing them in the spiritual. "My kingdom is not of this world," and "I speak to the world those things which I have heard of him [the Father]," were his words. Evidently "the people were astonished at his doctrine," and many opposed because his teachings contradicted the testimony of the mortal senses. When asked what his authority was for his teachings, he referred them to his works. His works established the truth of his teachings, proved his words, and there can be no other way of establishing the truth. We judge of the correctness of a teaching by its practical import, by what can be accomplished for mankind by it. Authority is established in no other way. It is the recognized scientific way.

The rapid growth of the Christian Science movement is entirely due to the fact that Christian Scientists are successfully doing the healing works which Jesus did, and assured his followers that, if they understood and obeyed his teachings, the same works would follow. For more than a thousand years the teaching of the Founder of the Christian religion, as given in the Bible, was without visible influence upon the lives of the greater number of his followers, but in these later centuries there has been a strong desire on the part of many sincere Christians to go back to primitive Christianity, to the pure teachings as recorded by those who heard them uttered and saw them applied to the solution of human problems.

Christian Scientists are not hoping for salvation through intellectual beliefs. Theories about the Christian religion have too often been substituted for Christianity itself. Even if one should accept the abstract doctrine that Christ Jesus was Jehovah Himself, that is to say God, instead of God's perfect manifestation, the spiritual image and likeness of Himself, as Christian Science teaches, it is valueless unless it can be proven to have some connection with freeing men from evil. That Mrs. Eddy's teachings have taught thousands of people to free themselves from temptations and sins, as well as sickness, from which they had previously striven in vain by other systems to free themselves, is too well established to need defense; organic diseases included, notwithstanding the critic's unbelief. Within Jesus' figurative language lies a spiritual meaning.

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