Article July 18, 1914 Issue

According to a report of a sermon by an evangelist appearing...

R. Stanhope Easterday

Logansport (Ind.) Journal-Tribune

According to a report of a sermon by an evangelist appearing in a recent issue, in attempting to illustrate a point on the subject of belief, the evangelist had recourse to the unfair custom, all too common among critics of citing disconnected statements of Christian Science teaching wrested from their necessary setting in explanatory context. Mrs. Eddy's actual statement on the subject of the alleged poisonous nature of certain vegetable and mineral substances, if read with unbiased mind in its legitimate setting in the context on pages 177 and 178 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," will be found to be a logical and practical deduction from the teaching of the Scriptures on this point.

While our critic, however, is ridiculing Mrs. Eddy's reasonable attempt to deal with certain phenomena of existence in a logical, scientific, and Scriptural manner, he is himself signally failing to explain to us the significant declaration on the part of infinite, divine intelligence, not of human conjecture, to the effect that after Deity had completed His creation of all things, and had Himself pronounced the same "very good" in its absolute entirety, God said significantly, "Behold, I have given you every herb ... which is upon the face of all the earth, ... to you it shall be for meat." Christian Scientists logically reason that if "every herb" of God's creating is good for food, and if "whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever: nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it," then present-day death-dealing attributes of certain herbs must be the result of some gigantic misconception of God's creation. Hence, it is but logical to conclude that a cultivation of the truer concept of all things will eliminate poisonous qualities and their dire results. Unless the evangelist can advance a more reasonable explanation of Scriptural promise and possibility couched in the words, "If they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them," which promise, by the way, is but a part of our Lord's unequivocal outline of his stern criterion of true discipleship as given in verses 15 to 18 of the sixteenth chapter of Mark, it might be well not to scoff at either the theory or practice of others.

When the prophet healed the poisonous waters with a pinch of salt and the pottage with a bit of meal, neither of which latter ingredients are conceded to be antidotes for poison, he pointed a big lesson both in divine economy and in effective, intelligent faith. It is significant also that the prophet did not eliminate either the water in the first instance or the gourds in the latter instance. Jesus achieved, in the healing of "all manner of sickness" and in the raising of the dead, far greater feats than the antidoting of poison; yet in addition to declaring significantly that "my Father worketh hitherto, and I work," he laid grave responsibility upon his followers in all ages in his promise, which was a world commission, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also."

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