Article April 12, 1913 Issue

From the time the Christian Science movement was...

Frederick Dixon—Bromley, Kent, England.

The Bromley Chronicle

From the time the Christian Science movement was started, something approaching half a century ago, down to the present, it has been usual for people who never think at all to follow the lead of others who have thought if possible less, in speaking of a Christian Science which is neither Christian nor scientific. As an epigram, this may be said to contain all the disabilities common to epigrams, without any of the brilliance which sometimes makes them inspiring and occasionally instructive. During the seventeen years that Christian Science may be said to have been seriously established in England, it has been my fate to read this phrase, dragged in by its shoulders by writes who could no more give you an intelligent definition of historic Christianity or of natural science than they could of the teaching of Mrs. Eddy. They have, however, read it so often that they have come to believe it, just as George IV is declared to have described the charge of the Union Brigade at Waterloo so perpetually as to have come to believe that he led it.

What is the meaning of the term Christian? If you are satisfied with the dogmatic rendering of it, it means a person who accepts the teaching of the Greek church, the church of Rome, the Anglican church, the Nonconformist bodies, or any other sect which has existed a sufficient number of years to have become regarded as orthodox. It must not be forgotten for one moment that every orthodox sect has been through a period of being considered heretical. Christianity has not changed; therefore, if the heretical sects ever were heretical, they cannot now be Christian; and if they are Christian now, they can never have been heretical. The heretic of yesterday is, however, always the orthodox of today.

All the time that the sects were fighting as to what constituted a Christian, the Bible was telling them, only they had not time for that. A Christian, everybody will admit, is a person who accepts the teaching of Jesus the Christ. What people differ over is what this teaching is. Jesus himself no doubt realized that these differences would ensue. AT all events, he took pains to leave a definition so complete and so scientific as to put it beyond the wit of human ingenuity successfully and eventually to pervert it, short of any means but by destroying the Bible. Not only in one gospel, but in all the gospels, he declared, directly and indirectly, that precept must go with practise, and theory be made good by demonstration. "He that believeth on me," he said, "the works that I do shall he do also." The simplicity of the language is so remarkable that all the ingenuity of theology has stumbled in the attempt to explain it away. A Christian is necessarily one who believes in the teaching of Jesus, and therefore a Christian as a believer is only entitled to the name in the exact proportion in which he succeeds in repeating the demonstration or object-lessons given by Jesus himself. Now the great body of these object-lessons was devoted to the healing of the sick. Delete from the text of the Bible the works of physical healing and you delete a great portion of that text. As if in order that there might be no mistake on the subject, Jesus' instructions to his own disciples were to preach the gospel and to heal the sick.

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From the time the Christian Science movement was...

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