Article June 1, 1912 Issue

The clergyman who undertook recently from his pulpit...

Frank Bell—Kittanning, Pa.

Simpson's Leader

The clergyman who undertook recently from his pulpit to say why he is not a Christian Scientist, is quoted as having set forth at the outstart what he professed to believe to be the fundamentals of Christian Science; deducing therefrom that Christian Science is all wrong. Fortunately Christian Science has no such fundamentals as the gentleman described. That "everything in this world is God," that "everything in this world is Spirit," etc., instead of being the teaching of Christian Science, is its direct opposite. Christian Science utterly repudiates pantheism, which identifies God with the material universe. It attempts neither to materialize Spirit nor to spiritualize matter, but accepts and acts upon the Scriptural assurance that Spirit and matter are contrary, one to the other, having nothing in common and being incapable of amalgamation in theory or practice. Christian Science accepts without reservation the inspired statement that God is Spirit and that they who would worship Him must worship Him in spirit. This of course is only another way of saying that God is not in matter, which is wholly unlike Spirit.

Being altogether mistaken in his premises as to the fundamentals of Christian Science, it follows that our critic's conclusions are unreliable. No one who understood Christian Science could infer that it dispenses with the cross. More than twenty references to the subject in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," which is the text-book of Christian Science, bear unquestioning acknowledgment of the cross as essential in the working out of the salvation of mankind. With particular applicability to occasions such as this, Mrs. Eddy says on page 224: "Of old the cross was truth's central sign, and it is today. The modern lash is less material than the Roman scourge, but it is equally as cutting. Cold disdain, stubborn resistance, opposition from church, state laws, and the press, are still the harbingers of truth's full-orbed appearing." Happily since this was written the press has largely resolved to be fair to Christian Science, but with regard to the church it is still too frequently the case that, as Mrs. Eddy says on page 239, "the sects, which endured the lash of their predecessors, in their turn lay it upon those who are in advance of creeds."

In certain alleged historical facts set forth in the sermon as quoted, much misinformation appears. It is not contended by Christian Scientists that anything was "revealed" to Mrs. Eddy in a supernatural way. She makes it plain that all truth is from God and in that sense it is a revelation, but a revelation possible to all men, and in fact shared by all men in proportion to the degree of spiritual perception eached by each. Mrs. Eddy never was a clairvoyant nor a spiritualist, though she tells of having investigated such beliefs in her search for something tangible. The absolute dissimilarity between Christian Science and the teachings with which the slightly informed have sometimes compared it, is evidence that it has not been adapted from any of the systems named. Even better evidence is the fact that none of these systems reforms the sinner and heals the sick as does Christian Science.

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