Article September 27, 1913 Issue

The vision that lighted up the consciousness of the patriarchs...

Charles D. Reynolds—Manchester, N. H.

The Union

The vision that lighted up the consciousness of the patriarchs of old, the psalmists and prophets, and that culminated in Jesus' life and teachings, and gave to the world Christianity, a religion of healing, is, according to our reverend critic, the vision needed today, not be a few, but by all. This vision that he says "lights up the splendor of the soul" and "gives quietus to the fetish of materialism," which the Christian church has lacked during most of its history, and now lacks, is being restored by Christian Science—an admission so frank that no one could ask for more. For this reason we are not wholly prepared to hear the statement that this lack which Christian Science is supplying is, after all, but a manifestation of "falsehood" and "excess," being "based on errors" which the critic discards, because they are not needed to light up "the splendor of the soul" and to give a healing "quietus to the fetish of materialism," for that is what it amounts to.

If we venture to ask what the error is which he would discard, we find it is the very thing which does the healing work that he says the churches have lacked. The thing he would discard from Christian Science is its primitive essential feature,—man's present ability to demonstrate God's omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience, through Mind, not matter. Throw out that fundamental feature, and what remains to light up the soul and impel the vision that brings the healing to mind and body? Take this away from Christian Science and you reduce it to the kind of Christianity that cannot heal the sick, and has not healed them, as the critic regretfully admits. His difficulty plainly lies in his failure to distinguish between Christian healing, the works and teachings of Jesus, and its sporadic counterfeits sailing under various aliases. Our critic would hardly admit that superstitious incantation, or blind faith, if it results in physical healing, is just as worthy and as much to be commended as the healing performed by Jesus. If that were true, it is in order to ask if there is any difference, after all, between Christianity and paganism; whether, after all, it is not just as good to bow down to an image of wood or stone as to the living and only true God.

Jesus had this issue to meet at every point of his career. The Old Testament contained prohibitions against Jews practising the superstitious rites observed by the other nations of ancient times (see Deut. xviii. 9-14), so when the Pharisees and priests wished to entrap him, they brought up the question of the method by which he did his healing works, very much as men are doing today in regard to Christian Science. They came with the charge, "This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils." That is to say, they accused him of practising the methods of, as we should say, the hypnotist, who employs the human mind and manipulates it by means of superstitious credulity, as sorcerers and magicians and exorcists of that day did. Jesus did not claim for his method that it was the same or at all similar to that of the world. He positively denied that his method of healing sickness had anything to do with human systems. He said: "My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me;" "As my Father hath taught me, I speak these things;" "Not as the world giveth, give I unto you;" "My kingdom is not of this world." And on this point it is well that we have so great a modern authority as Professor Harnack, who says that when Luke the physician became a follower of Christ he gave up medical science and adopted the practise of Christian Science.

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