Article April 4, 1914 Issue

The minister who has found time to condemn Christian Science...

Paul Stark Seeley—Albany, Ore.

Herald

The minister who has found time to condemn Christian Science so generously, as reported in a recent issue of the Herald, seems to be laboring under a sense of what he believes Christian Science to be. If the critic could find his way to an unbiased view-point of this new-old religion, he perhaps might not be ready as yet to accept its teachings, but he would, I am sure, avoid a repetition of the erroneous statements made in his recent sermon. Your readers have without doubt observed that he is not the first of his profession to attack Christian Science.

In all fairness, it is to be remembered that for nearly forty years Christian Science has prospered and grown in the face of the most bitter criticism. Today the movement numbers among its rapidly increasing membership, men and women of intelligence from every class of society and from all of the leading nations of the earth. A religion which in this comparatively short time has not only attracted but held the attention and loyalty of such a vast number of the world's people, will not be lightly dismissed as the "worst of all" religions, because the reverend critic, looking through his glass of ecclesiastical dogmatism, tells his hearers that that is what he sees. The time when men accept with blind faith their minister's opinions as gospel truth, is rapidly being supplanted by an age which demands a religion that is not one of words, but of deeds, a religion that can be practised and proved in daily life, whether the need be for power to overcome sin or to heal the body of sickness. Such was the religion taught and practised by Jesus and the apostles, and such is the religion that Christian Science is giving to the world today, some Christian ministers to the contrary notwithstanding. The Master said, "Ye shall know them by their fruits."

In the part of the sermon that was reported, vigorous exception is taken to the teaching of Christian Science that sin, sickness, and death are unreal. The objection is not uncommonly raised by hostile critics, and by those who are uninformed as to what Christian Scientists really believe in regard to this dismal triad. In the text-book of Christian Science, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy has plainly stated her position on this important question. On page 474 she writes, "If sin, sickness, and death are as real as Life, Truth, and Love, then they must all be from the same source; God must be their author." Again, on page 472, she says, "The only reality of sin, sickness, or death is the awful fact that unrealities seem real to human, erring belief, until God strips off their disguise. They are not true, because they are not of God."

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