Article February 21, 1914 Issue

In reply to your correspondent who writes over the pseudonym...

M. I. Whitcroft

Clifton (England) Chronicle

In reply to your correspondent who writes over the pseudonym of "A Churchwoman," let me say that the Christian Science teaching on the Trinity is simple, clear, reasonable, and absolutely in accordance with the Bible; whereas that of the church, with all due respect to those who formulated the creed, is utterly vague, even to those whose orthodoxy compels them to accept it. Many clergymen of the Church of England today avoid using the Athanasian creed, for there is without doubt, on their part and on that of many churchmen and churchwomen, a strong tendency to strike out on a broader line of thought than they have followed in the past. Therefore what is considered orthodoxy today, may be heterodoxy in the near future, as "progress takes off human shackles" (Science and Health, p. 256). Jesus never taught, as your correspondent claims, that God is three persons in one, but in sending his disciples out to teach all nations and baptize them "in the name [nature] of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," he gave them a practical, intelligible command to demonstrate man's unity with his eternal, divine Principle, "Life, Truth, and Love," which "constitute the triune Person called God" (Science and Health, p. 331). Through this understanding of God, Jesus wrought his mighty works, and through the same understanding, though at present but faintly reflected, Christian Scientists are yielding obedience to his command in healing the sick and the sinful.

Your correspondent is evidently one of those who take such a wholly material view of the teachings of the Bible that they fail to grasp the spiritual meaning which underlies its statements; hence her failure to perceive the contradictory nature of the two accounts of the creation given in the first and second chapters of Genesis. If we admit that God is infinite, eternal Spirit, the first and only cause, we are bound to admit that all He creates must be in His own image and likeness, spiritual, coexistent, and coeternal with Him. As Mrs. Eddy so ably expresses it: "God, without the image and likeness of Himself, would be a nonentity, or Mind unexpressed. He would be without a witness or proof of His own nature" (Science and Health, p. 303). To believe that God first created man spiritual, and then recreated him out of the dust of the ground, is to believe that God created the flesh of which Paul wrote, "They that are in the flesh cannot please God," and which Jesus declared "profiteth nothing."

When Paul, speaking in the usual metaphor employed in the East, referred to the body as being "the temple of the Holy Ghost," he showed the necessity for purifying consciousness of every belief of material sense, for spiritual consciousness alone is the "temple of the Holy Ghost." It was St. John's spiritual consciousness (while still on this material plane) which gave him that wonderful vision of the holy city which he describes as having "no temple [body] therein," for "the kingdom of God is within" us, in spiritual consciousness. Through Mrs. Eddy's inspired interpretation of the Scriptures this great truth has again been revealed to this age, bringing to countless thousands freedom from the bondage of sin and disease, and giving them the peace "which passeth all understanding." May it not be, therefore, that it is not Mrs. Eddy's writings which are "fantastic theories, false to Christianity," etc., but that your correspondent, like the scribes and Pharisees of old, is too full of materialistic thoughts about God, of creeds and dogmas, to recognize this reappearing of the Christ, Truth.

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