Article May 16, 1914 Issue

It is impossible to go over the ground covered by the Rev. Mr.—,...

Frederick Dixon—Newcastle-on-Tyne, England

Newcastle Illustrated Chronicle

It is impossible to go over the ground covered by the Rev. Mr.—, for the simple reason that I do not see any good in doing what he has done, that is, making assertions without definite proof. I am therefore selecting the particular subject in his sermon which the head-lines of your report select as the dominant issue, namely, that Christian Science is neither Christian nor scientific.

Now this critic, though he made this statement, did not attempt to prove it in any way. In order to be Christian it is not necessary to father the opinions of those who call themselves orthodox, and in order to be scientific it is not necessary to accept the views of a particular school of natural science. With your permission I will make this good. The word Christian, as everybody may see by a reference to the Oxford dictionary, simply means some one who accepts the teaching of Jesus the Christ. Now Jesus the Christ made the test of an understanding of his teaching a scientific one, namely, the healing of the sick. Therefore, the only way in which it is possible to prove that any definite teaching is Christian, is the way demanded by Christ Jesus, namely, the demonstration by "signs following." If this were otherwise, you could not possibly say there was such a thing as Christian teaching.

From the beginning of the Christian era, the various sects which have claimed that their teaching is Christian, have been persecuting and murdering one another because they taught fundamentally different things as Christian. The curious thing is that, time after time, orthodoxy, having failed to extirpate heterodoxy by persecution, has taken it to its bosom, with the result that the two have combined to rend the next exponent of heterodoxy.

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