Article January 9, 1915 Issue

During the past few days the peace-loving city of Greeley...

Ezra W. Palmer—Boulder, Col.

The Weld County Progressive

During the past few days the peace-loving city of Greeley has witnessed an abnormal condition within her borders,—the stirring up of hate against some of her citizens, the fanning of religious intolerance, the attempted interference with the religious freedom of others, and a studied effort to cast stigma and odium on the Christian Science church and its adherents ; all this in the name of Christ, by an evangelist who apparently has forgotten that the mission of Christ was love and not hate.

Jesus Christ plainly warned his followers against offending his children, and declared that "it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea." While the evangelist has assumed a great responsibility in his assault on the religion of others, the responsibility is not alone on him. His employers, the individuals who brought him to Greeley and who should have known the character of his intolerant utterances, have a like heavy responsibility, and this is the more evident from the fact that the evangelist in Greeley is merely repeating the performance he boasts to have staged in other cities. Last week he stormed against Christian Scientists in Bounder. So, too, the men and women who may have assented to his bitter attacks, should ponder well their course, weigh it by the golden rule, and answer to themselves the question of the beloved disciple when he said, "He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?"

Were the charges true which the evangelist made in the press and from the pulpit against Christian Science while preaching in your city, considerable difficulty would be found in attempting to explain the phenomenal growth of the Christian Science movement all over the civilized world. A similar difficulty would be met in attempting to account for the changed lives of the adherents of Christian Science, the spiritual awakening they have experienced, the love they manifest for God and man, the freedom from disease and sin they now enjoy, the profound gratitude they express to God for the light of divine Truth which has come to them for their guidance. To account rationally for these results, and accept the grotesque picture of Christian Scientists and Christian Science as painted by this evangelist, is an impossible feat, for the simple reason that he presents an utterly distorted view of Christian Science and its redemptive work for humanity.

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