Article May 10, 1913 Issue

In my first letter in answer to the critic I pointed out...

E. M. Ramsay—Edinburgh, Scotland.

Evening News

In my first letter in answer to the critic I pointed out that he had most seriously misrepresented the teachings of Christian Science on the very important question of sin. In his letter of the 19th he offers no apology on this score, but proceeds to misrepresent its teachings still further by falsifying the text of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy. "God is identical with nature," he says. "That surely sounds like pantheism." We admit that as quoted by him it certainly does sound like pantheism, but let any one look up the passage in the text-book, and this is what he will find: "In one sense God is identical with nature, but this nature is spiritual and is not expressed in matter" (Science and Health, p. 119). It will thus be seen that the meaning of the sentence has been completely reversed by the critic.

He then quotes in inverted commas the following sentence, if sentence it can be called: "Man is incapable of sin; because soul is immortal, soul cannot sin." The first five words are taken from page 475, and form part of a section on man which occupies two pages and a half. The remaining words come from page 468, and deal with the nature of Spirit! Christian Science accepts the Bible statement that man was made in the image and likeness of God, and was part of that creation which God Himself pronounced to be "very good." If we are to be benefited by the Scriptures, we must have an intelligent understanding of their meaning. We take this statement to mean that that which is essential and fundamental in man is like God, and that whatever is unlike God must be unlike the man made in His image and likeness. This recognition, that the good in us is the real, gives us far greater power to resist evil and part company with it than did the views we previously entertained. Thus the words, "Man is incapable of sin," means that the image and likeness of God cannot sin.

The second half of this concocted sentence should read: "Because Soul is immortal, Soul cannot sin." Immortal sin appears to us to be a contradiction in terms. Sin is a destructive agency; only perfection can be immortal. Good dies not; truth is indestructible. No man possesses any private or personal good or truth; the good he manifests, the truth he expresses, is a quality of God, Spirit, the supreme Soul of the universe. "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."

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