Article March 21, 1914 Issue

No well-informed person would say that Christian Science...

Frank Bell—Newport, Pa.

The News

No well-informed person would say that Christian Science denies the reality of sin, without adding the explanation that the term "reality," as used in this connection, relates wholly to things spiritual and eternal, and not to material life or human beings. The teaching of Christian Science is not that "sin is merely in thought," but that it originates in thought, which is an entirely different proposition. The universal testimony of those who have turned to this religion, is that it has greatly aided them in dispensing with sinful habits and overcoming evil tendencies. Such results do not come from ignoring sin, but from the Christian Scientist's better apprehension of the fact that an evil act presupposes an evil thought, and that the destruction of the cause of sin is much more effective than the mere effort to minimize its results. This teaching preeminently promotes clean, pure thinking.

It is no less unfair and incorrect to say that Christian Science shuts its eyes to human pain and suffering. Fully 75 per cent of the adherents of this religion were drawn to it because of its practical answer to their call for relief from sickness after other methods had been tried in vain. Christian Science could no more heal sickness by ignoring it than it could overcome sin by a like expedient, and it has been widely successful in both these directions. Therefore something is redically wrong with the reasoning of those who still think the practice of Christian Science consists in telling the invalid he is not sick, and the sinner he has done no wrong.

The ancient absurdity that Christian Science can correct functional disorders but is powerless in the face of organic diseases, is seldom repeated nowadays except by those who care not for, or will not have, better information on the subject. For years the testimonies published regularly in the official periodicals or given orally in the Wednesday meetings, have included large numbers of such cases. Usually these testimonies are given by well-known persons, whose statements may easily be verified. In any community where this teaching is well established, an unprejudiced inquirer can have no difficulty in satisfying himself that organic diseases, so diagnosed by competent and reputable medical physicians, have been healed by Christian Science treatment. This religion does not teach that mortal man is perfect. On the contrary, it holds mortality and imperfection to be synonymous terms. Its references to the perfect man are clearly explained as not applicable to the human personality, but to man's real, spiritual selfhood, which is neither physical nor mortal.

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