Article July 26, 1913 Issue

A recent critic says that I will be surprised to hear that my...

Frederick Dixon—Richmond, Surrey, England.

Richmond Herald

A recent critic says that I will be surprised to hear that my previous letter, which you published, has done more to convince him that Christian Science has less in common with the Bible than anything he has yet read. He may be, in turn, surprised to hear that I am not in the least surprised. Indeed, judging from his method of presenting evidence, I should be extremely surprised if he regarded anything I said seriously. It is my habit to argue my case as closely as I can, and never to make charges on evidence I am not prepared to produce, or to accuse people of outrageous conduct on hearsay evidence. As, I regret to say, this is the critic's method, I am not the least surprised that my method does not appeal to him.

It is an axiom of criticism that before you criticize a person's deductions you must master his definitions. That is to say, that it is a puerile proceeding to denounce conclusions which have no bearing on definitions, as this simply perverts, instead of elucidating, what a writer or speaker has said. If the gentleman to whom our critic refers had read Mrs. Eddy's book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," before writing to the papers about it, he would have been saved from falling into the very class of criticism which all great writers and thinkers have necessarily utterly repudiated. Mrs. Eddy sometimes speaks of man as the spiritual image and likeness of God, and sometimes as the material human being, and he who has eyes to see can always distinguish "between God's man, made in His image, and the sinning race of Adam" (Science and Health, p. 345). It is the image and likeness of God which she says is without sin, and it so happens that she says precisely the reverse about the human being. Of course, if you completely reverse what a writer says, it is in your power to gain Pyrrhic victories on every occasion, but we all know what such victories end in; so perhaps before the gentleman rushes into print again to demounce Mrs. Eddy's conclusions, he will be good enough to make sure of her premises.

As for the clergyman who preached against Christian Science, clergymen are preaching against other religions every day, so that Christian Science is no exception. It is just because people are wasting their time preaching against Christian Science, while Christian Scientists, instead of wasting their time in denouncing their neighbors, are devoting it to demonstrating the truth in which they believe, that Christian Science is spreading more and more rapidly over the whole world. It is always much easier to denounce somebody else for not being a Christian than to be a Christian yourself. Then, without giving me time to reply, this clergyman takes up his discourse again in the next issue of the paper, and announces that what he contends for is "a visible fulfilment" of prophecy, and "not a spiritual imagination." I do not know whether he quite sees where he is himself, but his contention is the exact position of Christian Science, and that is why Christian Science demands that preaching shall be supported by healing. Jesus said, "Preach the gospel" and "Heal the sick,"—in plain English, support your preaching by a visible fulfilment. The gentleman supports his preaching simply by attacking his neighbor, which is exactly where I contend he is making his mistake. It was Jesus who said, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also," and therefore it was Jesus who made a man's claim to be considered a believer proportionate to his ability to do the works he had done. He healed the sick and raised the dead. Christian Scientists are healing the sick today, and healing them beyond any question at all. That they have not acquired sufficient of the Mind that was in Christ Jesus to raise the dead, does not make Jesus' command less imperative, nor does it prove that Mrs. Eddy's contention was "spiritual imagination."

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