Article August 9, 1913 Issue

Christian Scientists are in perfect agreement with the...

Paul Stark Seeley—Union, Ore.

The Oregon Scout

Christian Scientists are in perfect agreement with the statement that God made man in His own image. Indeed, it is a fundamental teaching of their religion, and this important premise is followed consistently to its logical conclusion. If in truth man is made in God's image, he must be like God, that is, of God's nature. From the beloved Master we learn that "God is Spirit." Man, then, made in God's image and likeness, must be spiritual. It is at this point that Christian Science parts company with those who accept the conclusion that man is material, unlike God, though at first agreeing that man was made in God's likeness. If there is but one God, and He is Spirit, His creation can only be spiritual, for spirit, intelligence, can never reverse its own nature and bring forth its opposite, matter, non-intelligence, although this is the illogical conclusion preferred by the orthodoxy of today.

But if Christian Science is true and man's being is spiritual, like that of his creator, the question naturally arises, Whence came the material universe and material man? Christian Science answers the question by reverting to the generally accepted statement in Genesis that God created all that was made, and that it was very good. God being the only creative power, man and the universe, His creation, must be like Him, spiritual and good. Then matter, the opposite of Spirit, can have no relationship to God or His creation. Its apparent existence is resolved by the force of irresistible logic into nothingness, which seems to be something, but in truth is nothing but false belief, belief in a life apart from God and resident in matter. Speaking to those who clung with blind obstinacy to their material belief, refusing to turn from matter to hear his spiritual message, Jesus exposed for all time the unreality of material being when he said, "Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil [evil], and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it."

That a material sense of existence is false and to be overcome by learning of man's spiritual being, was proven many times by the lowly Nazarene, who furnished ample evidence of this truth by healing the sick, raising the dead, feeding the five thousand, and walking on the waves, so breaking the most strongly entrenched laws of material belief, at the same time making it clear that he came not "to destroy, but to fulfil;" that is, to fulfil the law of Spirit, God. And such is the work of Christian Science in the present era. It is turning the thought of men from a material to a spiritual base, and is liberating them from the false belief in a power unlike God and from the bondage of sin, disease, and evil in every form.

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