Article May 9, 1914 Issue

I note in a recent issue the report of a sermon by a reverend...

R. Stanhope Easterday

Lafayette (Ind.) Journal

I note in a recent issue the report of a sermon by a reverend gentleman, in which he touches upon Christian Science in a manner that may be misleading to your readers. So nearly, indeed, does the minister in the general outline of his sermon approximate the teachings of Christian Science, that we are surprised to have him speak in sweeping disparagement of these same teachings in the latter part of his discourse. The apparent confusion at least indicates that the speaker does not understand Christian Science teaching at all; hence, of course, his misrepresentation of it.

Contending stoutly for such fundamental points of Christian theology as the fact that man and not God is to be reconciled, that "God hates sin but loves the sinner," that "sin is self-destructive," etc., it would seem to require no far stretch of reasoning to deduce the further teaching in direct conformity with Christian Science,—that sin and the sufferer should not be confused in our reasonable effort to "judge righteous judgment," in dealing with the broad theme of sin and salvation. In Christian Science, reasonable effort is made, in conformity with Scriptural teaching, not to judge in such matters after the sight of the eye or the hearing of the ear, but to follow the Master's more wholesome sense of the proposition, as evidenced in his persistent effort to separate the sin from the sufferer.

A careful analysis of this process of impersonalizing evil in effecting its destruction, will be found to conform more reasonably with our critic's contention that "even so it is not the will of your Father, which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish." Evil being thus impersonalized and tending logically to self-destruction, all that is hateful in the sight of Deity can be destroyed and yet leave real being absolutely untouched. Such a logical view of evil and its final elimination is in direct conformity with the divine plan of atonement made plain in the Scriptures and championed in Christian Science. One can suffer from misconception; and as we are taught in the first chapter of Genesis, that God created all and pronounced it good, while evil was designated by Jesus as emanating from "a liar, and the father of it," being manifested first in the uncertain atmosphere of "a mist," "a deep sleep," and a "dream," why not concede that Jesus, in bringing the truth into the world, simply eliminated the fatal results of a gigantic misconception of spiritual being by recalling the true sense of all things? Thus Jesus was crucified, buried, and rose again to prove that all phases of evil, including sin, disease, and death, can be eliminated from human experience, can be "destroyed" or "lost" by the process of lifting consciousness above the erroneous material sense into the true spiritual concept of all real being.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

I note in a recent issue the report of a sermon by a reverend...

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access