Article August 9, 1913 Issue

The reference of the Rev. A. J. Waldron to Christian Science,...

Frederick Dixon—Brixton, England.

Brixton Free Press

The reference of the Rev. A. J. Waldron to Christian Science, in a recent issue, is at once courteous and kindly May I be permitted to say, however, that though I am sure he would be happy to debate on the subject of Christian Science, no Christian Scientist would dream of accepting such a challenge. Christian Scientists have learned long ago that nothing whatever is to be gained by such methods, unless it be the generation of a certain amount of heat in a public audience, which is rather to be deprecated than anything else. Christian Science, for this among other reasons, has based its claim to public attention on its ability to demonstrate the Principle it advocates. It is partially for this reason that it places so much stress on healing; and by healing, let me point out, I do not mean the mere removal of physical ills, but that mental change which is referred to in the Bible as the gaining of the Mind of Christ. When the writer of the epistle of James declared that "faith without works is dead," he referred, in the opinion of Christian Scientists, to this very fact. A mere declaration of faith in dogma has meant the division of Christendom into opposing camps, which for centuries have torn not only each other's opinions, but each other's bodies, in pieces. Had these camps settled their differences, not on the scaffold, at the stake, or on the field of battle, but instead by obeying the divine command to prove their faith by their works, it would soon have been made apparent which of them was walking most nearly in the footsteps of Jesus the Christ.

In saying that those who believed in him would be able to do the works he did, the Founder of Christianity surely made it sufficiently plain that the test of what a man knew of God was to be his ability to demonstrate the knowledge he professed. To pretend that the Christian Science position is weakened by Christian Scientists' inability to perform all the works which were performed by Jesus, is just about as sensible as it would be to say that nobody had any right to call himself a mathematician who had not solved every conceivable mathematical problem. Just in the proportion in which a man lives up to the standard of Christianity upheld by Jesus of Nazareth, will he prove able to imitate the mighty works of the Founder of Christianity. This has been put briefly and lucidly by Mrs. Eddy, on page 40 of her "Miscellaneous Writings": "The reason that the same results follow not in every case, is that the student does not in every case, possess sufficiently the Christ-spirit and its power to cast out the disease. The Founder of Christian Science teaches her students that they must possess the spirit of Truth and Love, must gain the power over sin in themselves, or they cannot be instantaneous healers."

The gentleman says, and says quite truly, that to a large extent a man's face is an index to his character, that is, to what he thinks; and he implies that this is true also of his body. Christian Science insists that a man's body reflects his thought, whether he is aware of it or not, and that this is exactly what Jesus meant when he said, "Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee or to say, Arise, and walk?" The ordinary definition of sin is always hopelessly unscientific; that is to say, it always indicated a breach of a moral code, which differs not only in various countries, but with the varying ethical standards of those countries. According to Christian Science, sin is belief in anything unlike God; that is to say, a man may be guilty of an obvious sin of commission, though such a sin would not be accepted as obvious in every country. In addition to this, however, he may be guilty of sins of omission of which the world is actually unconscious. Nevertheless, these sins of omission or commission reflect his consciousness, with the result that his body which is only the subjective condition of his thought, passes through various physical changes, which we call healthy and unhealthy, but which in more archaic English were called holy or unholy, since the term holy is only another form of the word whole. The man made "every whit whole," was, in simple English, the man every whit holy. Surely, once more, this is simply what Jesus meant when he said, "Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?"

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