Article April 11, 1914 Issue

A writer in a recent issue of the News declares "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,"...

Ezra W. Palmer—Denver, Col.

Rocky Mountain News

A writer in a recent issue of the News declares "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," the text-book of Christian Science, "is neither scientific nor Christian." This statement has a familiar ring, as it has been reiterated by hostile critics for the last forty years. Nevertheless the sale of the book steadily increases, and reports from public libraries show that the demand for it by the public is greater than for any other book. Furthermore, the mere reading of Science and Health frequently heals the sick, and its earnest readers turn again to the neglected Bible and become genuine and devoted students of that incomparable Book of life. Hostile critics find it rather embarrassing to explain these results from the reading of a book declared by them to be so contradictory.

The critic, in attempting to tell what this religion teaches, falls into the usual ditch of those who try to explain what they have not themselves grasped. Of course Christian Science does not deny that sin, sickness, pain, evil, and death exist in human experience. Mrs. Eddy says on page 460 of Science and Health, "Sickness is neither imaginary nor unreal,—that is, to the frightened, false sense of the patient." Christian Science simply declares that these evils are not sent of God, and therefore have no divine authority. It must be apparent to every unbiased person that an infinite God, whom the Scriptures define as Love, cannot be the author of the frightful evils and disasters which beset man. Men could not love a God guilty of such enormities against His children, who are created, as the writer of Genesis declares, in His image and likeness.

To bolster his contention that God chastises His children by sending sin, disease, and death among them, the critic quotes as proof the second account of creation in Genesis. Doubtless the gentleman is aware that Bible scholars generally agree that there are two accounts of creation in Genesis. The first account is a statement of spiritual creation. Man is there declared to be made in the image and likeness of God. In this account there is no record of sin, disease, and death. We are told of this creation that "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." In the second account we are told that a mist went up from the earth, and that man was made from the dust of the ground. Evil is introduced into this latter narrative with "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." Which account is true? Both cannot be. Christian Science takes the position that the first presents the true creation of the universe and man made in the likeness of Spirit, while the second is "the history of the untrue image of God, named a sinful mortal" (Science and Health, p. 502).

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