Article December 27, 1913 Issue

Your issue of the 4th instant contains a report of a lecture...

John W. Harwood—Accrington, England

Observer and Times

Your issue of the 4th instant contains a report of a lecture given by the pastor of a Congregational church on the subject of Christian Science. It is usual to expect a lecturer to be cognizant of the facts relating to his subject, but that such was not the case in this instance is very clearly shown in the unjustifiable and untrue statements which were made regarding Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. His assertion that "Science and Health is the Bible of Christian Scientists," is but one instance. The Bible, which many who are now Christian Scientists seldom opened before knowing of Christian Science, and which they now love to read and study because they are able, through the light thrown upon it by Science and Health, to perceive its more spiritual and infinite meanings, is the same Bible from which this pastor himself takes his texts each Sunday and gives to his hearers what he thinks is its meaning. If, as the lecturer asserts, this text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," has brought to the author a fortune, it must bear witness to the fact of its great usefulness to mankind.

The one thing the critics give Christian Science credit for is the one thing that is not warranted, namely, its insistence on the power of the human mind. Now Christian Science does nothing of the kind. The insistence, as set forth on almost every page of Science and Health, is upon the power of God, who, as defined by Christian Science, is "incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love" (p. 465). It is the revelation of the omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience of God, good, which exposes the impotence or nothingness of evil, including all disease.

That a minister of the gospel should emphasize the reality of evil and disease seems strange, for if disease or sin existed as a fact, or reality, it would be impossible through any system to destroy it. In Jesus' time diseases were known as devils, and Jesus defined devil, or evil, as "a liar, and the father of it," and said, "There is no truth [reality] in him." So when Christian Science relegates evil, including disease, to the realm of falsity, it is but following Jesus' example. The remedy that Christian Scientists use for casting out devils and healing the sick is the same as that employed by Jesus. He said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Free from what? Free from believing a lie. Jesus came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it, and in fulfilling God's law, sin, disease, and death disappeared, proving these conditions to be neither God-created nor God-permitted.

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