Article February 21, 1914 Issue

According to published reports, both the evangelist and...

R. Stanhope Easterday

Warsaw (Ind.) Times

According to published reports, both the evangelist and the Rev. Mr. — have departed from the regular orderly "preaching of the Word" to denounce Christian Science. They have apparently been guilty of revamping old, hackneyed, and oft-refuted criticisms of this system of Christian teaching.

The first-named gentleman, in one of his early efforts, assigned himself to a large task when he declared himself "set in defense of orthodoxy," inasmuch as the broadest and most generally accepted meaning of this word is "correct in doctrine." It will therefore be necessary for the critic in this instance to determine which of the various interpretations of our Lord's teaching is the strictly correct one. The only practical test in the matter of thus determining true orthodoxy is logically the results, or fruits, or "signs following," which the great Founder of Christianity declared should be the only logical criterion of true discipleship. Such a test takes time, and the present indications are that Christian Science is forging rapidly to the front, if a large and everincreasing volume of incontestable evidence in the healing of all manner of diseases and the reforming of sinners is to be the basis of judgment. The same gentleman gave utterance to this statement: "Whenever you hear criticism and faultfinding, you know the devil is around and God is doing something." With this statement Christian Scientists are entirely agreed, and on this basis they account for this critic's unreasonable arraignment of Christian Science.

The gentleman says that Christian Science "with one stroke of the pen does away with atonement." Let us see what Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, says in this regard. On page 18 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," the text-book of Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy begins her lucid chapter on the subject of atonement with these words: "Atonement is the exemplification of man's unity with God, whereby man reflects divine Truth, Life, and Love." She goes on to explain, among other things, that "the atonement of Christ reconciles man to God, not God to man." (See also the definition of "atonement," New Standard dictionary.) This critic also raises objection to the Christian Science conception of "devil," or "evil," as in the last analysis "unreal." Our Lord himself referred to all manner of evil, including disease as well as sin, as the work of the devil, and then designated this same devil, or Satan, as "a liar, and the father of it." It takes no far stretch of logical reasoning to deduce that a lie is literally unreal, and it is upon the basis of such reasoning that Christian Science deduces the unreality of evil and eliminates it from human experience, thus healing the sick and destroying sin.

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