Article February 28, 1914 Issue

In a recent issue, under the heading of "The Superman...

Frederick Dixon—London, England

Dulwich Post

In a recent issue, under the heading of "The Superman and the Human Race," a contributor insists that a subject like Christian Science "is of no use unless taken seriously in hand." Now it is sufficiently obvious that no serious subject can be safely approached from the standpoint of dilettanteism, and least of all can Christian Science. That is a mistake which the average critic makes. To a copious ignorance he adds a generous prejudice, and then, from the summit of the nearest intellectual hillock, opens the flood–gates of his invective like the sausage seller of Aristophanes. The abuse of the ignorant, says Anatole France, is something to rejoice over, and if there is any truth in the epigram, Christian Scientists should be rejoicing all along the road.

This, however, makes it all the more necessary that they should devote themselves whole–heartedly to the demonstration of the teaching they have accepted. "The Christian Scientist," Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health, "has enlisted to lessen evil, disease, and death; and he will overcome them by understanding their nothingness and the allness of God, or good" (p. 450). What it means to accomplish this she explains on page 3, where she writes, "But to understand God is the work of eternity, and demands absolute consecration of thought, energy, and desire." One of the essential differences between Christian Science and other religious teachings is the fact that it has accepted the demand of the Founder of Christianity that religion should be proved by demonstration rather than by profession. When the epistle of St. James declares that "faith without works is dead," it certainly alludes to this, and the writer can scarcely have had any other words in mind than those recorded in the fourth gospel, when Jesus declared, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also." The faith, then, of the Christian, was to be proved by the works Jesus himself had done, and these works were very largely composed of physical healing. For this reason the necessity for healing disease has been peculiarly insisted upon by Mrs. Eddy. Not that the healing of disease itself is the be–all and end–all of Christianity, but because the healing of disease means the overcoming of mental inharmony, and so, indirectly, the destruction of sorrow, of want, and of sin.

When once the fact is grasped that sickness is mental, the corollary must dawn upon any man that every phase of inharmony is mental also. The way, then, to heal the sick is the way to heal the sinner, and a man is made physically whole in precisely the same ratio that he is made mentally holy. The simple fact is, that whole in its original sense is merely an archaic form of holy, and a man is made "every whit whole" exactly as the belief of sorrow, of sickness, or of sin, in fact, of everything unlike God, is obliterated from the human consciousness. It will be seen from this how absolutely true it is that if a man desires to progress in Christian Science he can do so only by approaching it in a most serious manner.

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