Article October 25, 1913 Issue

I do not question our critic's superficial acquaintance with...

John L. Rendall

The Toledo (Iowa) Chronicle

I do not question our critic's superficial acquaintance with Christian Science teachings, but I do emphatically deny that he understands these teachings, for the main reason that he does not correctly state them. Giving him credit for honesty of purpose, there is no other possible conclusion when on the face of his every statement about the fundamentals of Christian Science there is abundant evidence of misunderstanding. I speak from the vantage-point of twenty years' study of the subject and as a graduate of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College founded by Mrs. Eddy. I do not charge the critic with lack of "intelligence;" he simply has not gotten the right view-point. It is as difficult for one steeped in the teachings of what is called "orthodoxy" correctly to view a differing religious teaching, as it is for one wearing green glasses to testify correctly as to the color of objects around him until he takes off his glasses. Therefore, in response to the challenge to "produce a single instance" in which he has "misstated or misrepresented Mrs. Eddy's teachings," I will say,—in a greater or less degree in practically every statement he has made.

If our critic really understood Christian Science, he would not pervert Mrs. Eddy's statement about the marriage relation, as quoted: "Until it is learned that generation rests on no sexual basis, let marriage continue." The invidious inference that this may be construed to mean that marriage may be abolished under present conditions of society, amounts to debauchery of the worst form, implying gross immorality; whereas the plain teaching, as understood by Christian Scientists, accords with Jesus' statement, "But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage." Christian Science in its every teaching inculcates the highest morality, as attested by its results in the overcoming of former conditions of immorality and sin. A good fountain sendeth not forth both sweet waters and bitter. Quoting from the sixth chapter of Paul's first letter to Timothy, wherein Paul cautioned him to beware of "vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called," our critic ingenuously asks, "I wonder what Paul was referring to?" In this he can only surmise. It is my opinion that Paul referred to those who failed to get the true understanding of Christ's teachings and to the gross materialism of so-called material science. Our critic's thinly veiled inference that St. Paul meant Christian Science is foolish on the face of it.

I am grateful to our critic for commending St. Paul's writings to me. I have studied them for many years. I esteem St. Paul as one of the original Christian Scientists. I wonder if our critic thinks that St. Paul or St. Peter or any other of Jesus' apostles would, if they were here today, refrain from Christian healing under the specious plea that the command to "heal the sick" is not for us. What is he going to do with the statements that Christ is "the same yesterday, and today, and forever," and that God is without "variableness" and with no "shadow of turning"? Christian Scientists scientifically understand that God, that the Christ, Truth, has not changed, and never can change. Neither has human nature changed. The "powers that be," in the church of Jeus' time, rejected Christian healing and crucified its great Exemplar. Modern high priests, scribes, and Pharisees do the same thing today under modern methods.

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