Article May 4, 1912 Issue

The criticism of a lecture on Christian Science, contained...

Frederick Dixon—Cambridge, England.

Cambridge Chronicle

The criticism of a lecture on Christian Science, contained in your issue of the 15th inst. [Dec., 1911], is surely one of the most amazing pieces of reasoning that any one has ever read. The critic declares that humanity is asking for bread, and Christian Science gives it a stone. Now the first part of the sentence, if it means anything, means that the teaching which was in the world before Christian Science has itself been a stone, otherwise people would not be asking for bread; and the second half omits the obvious fact that whatever Christian Science may seem to the critic, it is the "peace of God which passeth all understanding" to the innumerable thousands of men and women whom it has rescued from the grave, lifted out of sin, and given joy for ashes. Again, is it not a little invidious to make comparisons between Christian Scientists and the good Samaritan? The suggestion, as a matter of fact, is by no means a happy one. The Samaritan was the heretic of his time, just as the Christian Scientist is constantly assumed to be today. The orthodox Jews walked past on the other side. What the orthodox do in our own time, I will not pretend to say; what the Christian Scientist does, the world is always being told. He is to be found, day and night, by the bedside of the sick, striving to save humanity from the bonds of evil which he is all the time accused of ignoring.

Then again, the writer explains that "the faith of Christian Scientists is worth while objecting to, because they believe that truth is of value, whatever it may happen to offer or take away, and because if disease, anguish, and sin are unreal from God's point of view, they are real enough from the suffering mortal's point of view." The first part of this remarkable sentence is, to me, frankly incomprehensible. Most people have imagined that Christianity was the pursuit of the truth which is to make the world free. Not so, apparently, our critic; while the second part makes it perfectly clear that she has omitted to read the text-book of Christian Science, or to begin to grasp what the lecturer said. On page 460 of Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy writes, "Sickness is neither imaginary nor unreal—that is, to the frightened, false sense of the patient. Sickness is more than fancy; it is solid conviction. It is therefore to be dealt with through right apprehension of the truth of being." This seems to be a bit unfortunate for the critic.

Finally, the lady takes exception to the lecturer's explanation of the Christian Science teaching of the unreality of evil. If evil is not unreal, it is real; that is manifest. If it is real, it is God-created, for God made everything that was made. Nor is this all. God declared everything He made good; consequently, if the critic is correct, God made evil and made evil good. It is perhaps not much to be wondered at that she should wish to dismiss Christian Science as monstrous logic, but even that would be better than reducing to an absurdity the truth which is to free the world.

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