Article January 30, 1915 Issue

If reported correctly in a recent issue, our critic at one...

Robert S. Ross

Ithaca (N. Y.) News

If reported correctly in a recent issue, our critic at one moment declares that Christian Science is not Christian, and the next moment that he does not deny that Christian Scientists are good people. In other words, our critic declares that what he assumes to be a corrupt tree can bring forth good fruit. This is what logicians term "loose reasoning." Jesus said, "By their fruits ye shall know them;" and James asked: "Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh." Christian Science makes people Christian because it is the unadulterated teaching of Christ Jesus, whose standard of measurement of Christian discipleship was one's ability to repeat the works that he did. But for the fact that religious history is a continuous record of the suffering of the so-called heterodox at the hands of the so-called orthodox, such untempered attacks on Christian Science by professed Christians would be unthinkable.

Christian Science gives answer to such attacks as that of our critic by industriously going about the Father's business of regenerating the sinner, healing the sick, and binding up the broken-hearted. Christian Scientists are preaching and practising a complete gospel, even while some professed Christians—themselves unable to do these "mighty works"—are accusing Christian Science of being unchristian. Jesus declared that he came to do the works of the Father, and among these works was the healing of the sick. If God were the author of sickness, Jesus would have been doing contrary to God's will in destroying sickness. If our critic attacks Christian Scientists for healing the sick, then he is attacking them for doing the very thing that Jesus declared his followers must do in order to prove that they understand his teachings.

The world in general believes that God is responsible for evil, and that evil, is, therefore, real and indestructible. Christian Science, however, declares, in the words of the Scriptures, that God is "of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity." If God is good and the only creator, His creation must be filled with His goodness, and there is no room left for evil. Evil can therefore have only a suppositional existence, with power to control mankind in the exact ratio that mankind believe in the reality of a lie. In no other way than by stripping evil of its self-assumed power can evil be destroyed.

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