Article February 22, 1913 Issue

A sermon on Christian Science reported in a recent...

Charles F. Kraft

Tacoma (Wash.) Tribune

A sermon on Christian Science reported in a recent Tribune contains much that is inaccurate concerning this subject. I appreciate the clerical critic's evident sincerity, and hope to present that which will clear up the confusion which manifestly has obtained. The text selected by our critic implies the belief that Christian Scientists do not live Christian lives. On the contrary, it is generally conceded that the adherents of this faith are exceptionally lovers of the truth. Instead of "tearing the Bible to pieces," this religious teaching elucidates the truths of the Bible, so that it becomes a daily practical help to the Christian Scientist.

Objection has been made to the Christian Scientists' use of the term "mortal mind," and the critic declares that man's mind is not "mortal." It should be understood that by "mortal mind" is meant the vacillating, finite sense of things which Paul styled the "carnal mind" and which he said "is enmity against God." Christian Science declares that the only perfect intelligence, or Mind, is God. This Mind is immortal, and the spiritual, God-created man reflects this Mind. It was through the operation of this Mind that the Master healed the palsied man to whom our critic referred, and cast out devils—evils generally. These demonstrations of the power of Mind to correct the errors of "mortal mind," Christian Science is today repeating, by destroying wicked tendencies, and in the conceded healing of what our critic is pleased to call "real" ills.

Right here let me say that Mrs. Eddy never has claimed that sickness is "imaginary." In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 460), she says: "Sickness is neither imaginary nor unreal,—that is, to the frightened, false sense of the patient. Sickness is more than fancy." And in "Rudimental Divine Science" (p. 10) she defines disease as "a thing of thought manifested on the body." In other words, disease is the result of error, evil. Being abnormal, unnatural, the manifestation of error, disease is not a part of God's real creation. Jesus defined evil, or devil, as a lie and a liar. A lie is never true, and a liar is not to be believed. When the crippled woman was brought to him to be healed, his diagnosis was that Satan (evil, devil, a lie) had bound her. How, it may be asked, could evil, being unreal, bind her? We answer, In the same manner that a lie always causes trouble; that is, through the belief that it is true. Christian Science strips evil of its false claims of power to produce either pleasure or pain and so destroys both the desire for it and the fear of it. This teaching is daily proving itself to be the truth which the Master promised his faithful followers should know, and that should make them free.

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