Article September 14, 1912 Issue

In a recent issue it is reported that at the services at the...

H. Coulson Fairchild

Plainfield (N.J.) Courier-News

In a recent issue it is reported that at the services at the Adventists' camp in your city, a clergyman took occasion while delivering a "stirring address" on the "origin, nature, and tendencies of modern spiritualism," to criticize Christian Science.

Now, Christian Science and spiritualism are not associated in the least with each other, and to make this clear Mrs. Eddy has devoted in the Christian Science text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," an entire chapter entitled "Christian Science versus Spiritualism." In this chapter no unkind remarks about Spiritualists will be found; but Mrs. Eddy carefully indicates how and why Christian Science is not akin to spiritualism. It would seem that if your readers are desirous of knowing the truth about the matter, they would do much better to judge for themselves from the statements in our authorized text-book than to rely upon the statement of one who is evidently not a close student of Christian Science or a practitioner thereof.

Jesus said, "My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself." Only those who understand and practise in some degree Christian Science are qualified to speak authoritatively of the doctrine. Even if one called himself a Christian Scientist, and was such only theoretically, he would not be qualified to speak with authority, for the reason that actual practise in healing the sick and destroying sin must precede that understanding of Christian Science which enables one to say, "I know that what I have proved of Christian Science is true." Christian Scientists having proved something of the doctrine are prepared to say, "I believe the whole because a part is proved," just as a student in mathematics would see that a problem in Euclid might be solved in that he had proved the rudimental rules of mathematics in his practise. Mrs. Eddy has said in Science and Health (p. 461): "Christian Science must be accepted at this period by induction. We admit the whole, because a part is proved and that part illustrates and proves the entire Principle."

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