Article April 19, 1913 Issue

It will be found that many of the religious systems of...

Jewish Herald

It will be found that many of the religious systems of the earth have something in common, whether it be a belief in God, an acknowledgment of moral responsibility, of human brotherhood, etc. General consent proves the eternal verities. While hunting for the conflicts between Judaism and Christian Science, it may be profitable also to consider their harmonies. The youngest and most vigorous child of the dominant faith is spreading with phenomenal rapidity, its creed and devotions are fostering happy souls as well as healthy bodies, and many who have drunk of its waters testify to their regenerating virtues.

Christian Science is not orthodox on the subject of Christ's divinity. It distinguishes between "Jesus," the man of flesh, and "Christ," the Spirit of God. It attributes to the former an exalted nature such as no other human has ever reached. It argues, however, that Christ was the perfect expression of the divine sonship, and contends that the same sonship is possible and natural to all mankind. By denying the reality of sin and suffering, Christian Science seeks to answer the question that puzzled Job and is yet vexing philosophers and theologians. Why does a good God create or permit these evils? While the answer may not be satisfactory to all minds, it is not to be lightly dismissed. If a God of goodness and omnipotence created the universe, a discordant condition may be considered as without foundation in nature. And wherein does this conflict with anything in the Old Testament? The fundamental thought of Yom Kippur is that by getting "at one" with God, raising the human soul [sense] to the altitute of the divine, sin and its effects are destroyed. And there is no reason why the work of one day cannot be duplicated every day of the year through the supremacy of the divine consciousness or immortal Mind over the human consciousness.

The average person knows Christian Science only as a healing cult. In the doctrine that sickness and suffering are unreal, that they conflict with the divine plan and will disappear before the exercise of divine Principle, the new church goes a long way from modern science. And yet substantially the same belief is entertained by millions of Hasidic Jews at the present time. To a people like the Jews, whose message to the world has been the nearness of God to man, who pray in times of trouble and repentance, whose Sabbath-evening prayers include the words, "In Thy kindness Thou sustainest the living, upholdest the falling, healest the sick, and settest captives free," the Christian Science doctrine should not seem far-fetched. It at least offers a new and not illogical theory of the efficacy of prayer. God is not asked to set aside the laws of the universe at the wish of man; but the divine power within man is invoked to harmonize his condition with those laws.

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