Article September 6, 1913 Issue

In his introductory address last week, the Moorhouse lecturer...

David Anderson—Melbourne, Australia

The Age,

In his introductory address last week, the Moorhouse lecturer defined Christian Science as a latter-day agnosticism, which denied the spiritual possibility of the material world, and also its reality as an object of experience. The Gnosties propounded a problem to the primitive church in asking how evil could originate from a wholly good cause, and how Spirit could be confined in matter, and so-called orthodox theology has not yet solved it. But thousands of thinkers have found satisfactory answers to these awkward questions in Christian

Science, which affirms that God, Spirit, is the only cause and creator, and that the creations of Spirit are necessarily spiritual, and denies the actual verity or lasting continuance of anything which conflicts therewith. This is the antithesis of agnosticism. Christian Science nowhere denies matter as an object of experience; it does deny that there is or can be life in matter. All search by physical scientists for life in that direction has proved futile. The physical scientist of today has reduced matter to force. The step from that to mental activity is not a long one.

A noticeable feature in the Sunday sermon which followed the week-night lecture is the marked modification of the learned preacher's attitude toward Christian Science as expressed in his previous criticisms. There is a freer admission of the facts of Christian Science, and a reduction of its "heresy" to the thought that disease is non-existent. The existence of disease is recognized in Christian Science as a condition of every-day mortal experience. The Christian Science view of the unreality of sickness, sin, and death, is not as represented by the lecturer. This can be learned through a careful study of the Christian Science text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy. Christian Science claims no monopoly of Christianity or of Christian healing. It asks that Christian Science healing should not be represented for what it is not, or mixed up with modes of mental and "faith" healing from which it differs in Principle and application. The preacher referred, as he has done before, to asserted difficulty in getting precise and definite instances of Christian Science healing. Quite recently it was pointed out to him that this difficulty does not exist, and that if he would carmark any one or any number of the instances of healing which appear in every issue of the official organs of the Christian Science church in Boston, the full postal addresses of the parties concerned would be furnished. At the same time he was invited to specify a few of the cases respecting which, in his previous attack, he declared he could not forget, that the neglect of medical aid had cost the lives of patients.

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