Article May 17, 1913 Issue

The Christian Scientist has adopted the ideal of Jesus...

Royal D. Stearns

Nemaha County (Neb.) Republican

The Christian Scientist has adopted the ideal of Jesus, an ideal which includes all the possibilities of good and excludes all the elements of the flesh and of evil. He finds the practical application and demonstration of this ideal in affirming the constant healing, guiding, sustaining presence of divine Love, and in denying any power or reality in evil. This declaration of good and denial of evil brings beneficial results just to the degree of the fulness of the understanding and the faithfulness of the application of the ideal in proving God's love and power to be sufficient for every need. Jesus' works and teachings furnish us an idealism which excludes all evil and includes all good. The Christian Scientist frankly and fully adopts his teachings, and he meets every manifestation of evil, whether of sickness, sin, poverty, sorrow, disaster, with a positive denial of its power or reality, and an affirmation of the allness and goodness of God; and just in the degree that he understands the proper application of the spiritual law involved, does he meet with beneficent results.

Your critic states that Christian Science is "nothing but the old philosophies of Hinduism which were practised five thousand years ago." There is no resemblance between Hinduism and Christian Science. One is a mystic philosophy, the other a practical religion; one demands the acceptance of doctrinal theories, the other asks for recognition and acceptance only to the extent that it is capable of individual demonstration. One is grossly idolatrous, the other is founded upon the first commandment. The test in Christian Science is the one laid down by the Founder of Christianity: "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also." Those "works," as is abundantly shown in the gospels, consisted in both healing the sick and the sorrowful and in destroying sin. Christian Science is the restoration of primitive Christianity, a Christianity "with signs following," demonstrating its power in spiritual and physical regeneration of the afflicted of earth.

Christian Science accepts the Bible declaration that "God is a Spirit," and that He must be worshiped "in spirit and in truth," and also takes the position that all God creates is spiritual, perfect, and eternal, as expressed in the first chapter of Genesis, in which God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over ... all." "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." Christian Scientists do not admit or believe that after God finished His spiritual, perfect, and eternal creation, He then made an imperfect man and universe, subject to sickness and full of evil and decay. We are told in the Bible that God is "of purer eyes than to behold evil."

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