Article October 11, 1913 Issue

A report in a recent issue alleges that the Rev. R. J. Wade...

R. Stanhope Easterday

Elkhart (Ind.) Truth

A report in a recent issue alleges that the Rev. R. J. Wade earnestly championed "the ministry of pain" in his Sunday morning sermon. This in itself could not possibly be objectionable to Christian Scientists, if such are his views, had the gentleman not seen fit to depart from his text far enough to become a critic of Christian Science, gravely misrepresenting the true purport of that system of religious teaching.

Incidentally, Christian Science differs from the philosophy of our critic in regard to the office of suffering in the development of human character in this essential point: The gentleman would seem to have argued that suffering and affliction are the necessary steps to the development of the "graces of Spirit," whereas the Christian Scientist contends that if such untoward conditions do by chance befall the individual, they should be made stepping-stones to achievement, instead of stumbling-blocks,—this in conformity with that sublime outline of the divine economy couched in the Scriptural statement, "All things work together for good to them that love God." It would seem, therefore, that the Christian Science view of this questionable "ministry of pain" is more tenable, Scriptural, and far more comforting than that of our critic, so that his allusion to Christian Science as a glaring instance of extreme departure from his own outline of divine discipline was absolutely uncalled for, while at the same time his merciless arraignment of Mrs. Eddy and of her system of religious teaching and of Scriptural interpretation known as Christian Science, was all the more unkind and uncalled for.

Your readers, however, may be interested to know just what Christian teach on points raised by our critic. Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, after years of Scriptural study, found that the only reasonable basis for true, scientific reasoning would be the undeniable, thought perhaps at present uncomprehended, premise of perfect, infinite, spiritual causation, God, upon the basis of which, in the light of the first chapter of Genesis and the opening verses of John's gospel, but one rational deduction was plausible and logical, this inevitable deduction being that man and the universe, resulting from such perfect, spiritual causation, must necessarily be spiritual and perfect, leaving no possibility of imperfection or discord of any nature. Following this deduction there must be another, equally plausible, to the effect that apparent imperfections, discord, disease, death, etc., must be in the last analysis the result of an imperfect conception of this spiritual, perfect, divine creation.

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