Article February 27, 1915 Issue

I have read, in your issue of recent date, the Rev. Mr.—'s...

Charles W. J. Tennant—Cockermouth, England

West Cumberland Times

I have read, in your issue of recent date, the Rev. Mr.—'s answer to the question, "Can a Christian accept 'Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures' as true Christian teaching?" Now, there are many definitions of a Christian, but I presume a Christian, as named in the above question, might be styled one who believes, or is assumed to believe, in Jesus the Christ and the truth as taught by him. Let us see what he taught, and compare it with the teaching of Science and Health.

Jesus gave us two commandments on which he said hung "all the law and the prophets." They are as follows: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind," and "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Now, to love God with all one's mind is to have that Mind "which was also in Christ Jesus," which is termed in Science and Health the divine Mind. It is to bring "every thought to the obedience of Christ." It may be asked from what standpoint did Jesus think,—from the standpoint of physical sense-testimony, or from the standpoint of spiritual understanding? Let us take an example. When Jesus met the man with the withered hand in the synagogue, did he speak from the view-point of the physical senses, or from spiritual understanding, when he said, "Stretch forth thy hand"? I think from the latter. This conforms exactly with what Mrs. Eddy writes: "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick" (Science and Health, p. 476).

Our critic has fallen into the mistake of criticizing the logic of Science and Health, because he has not discerned with what clearness Mrs. Eddy has distinguished between the absolute and the relative. She writes: "The temporal and unreal never touch the eternal and real. The mutable and imperfect never touch the immutable and perfect. The inharmonious and self-destructive never touch the harmonious and self-existent" (p. 300). When referring to the relative, she says: "Sickness is neither imaginary nor unreal,—that is, to the frightened, false sense of the patient. Sickness is more than fancy; it is solid conviction. It is therefore to be dealt with through right apprehension of the truth of being" (p. 460). This conforms to St. Paul's statement that "the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." Christian Science teaches the unreality of the temporal and the reality of the eternal. In Hebrews we are told that "through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear."

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