Editorial March 13, 1915 Issue

The Entire Gospel

Archibald McLellan

There is a popular belief among some of those who have not taken the trouble to inform themselves as to what Christian Science really is, that it is simply a cure for physical ills,—a sort of universal panacea for illness, into which a certain element of religion has been injected, in the way of a saving grace. This false concept of Christian Science is due, of course, to the failure on the part of religion or the church for hundreds of years to lay stress upon the healing work of Christ Jesus and the early Christians as an essential part of the Christianity of all times.

It is because of this failure, moreover, that so many have now come to believe that there is no connection between the healing of sickness and the healing of sin. Religious men and women seem to have become so accustomed to this belief, and so imbued with the popular teaching that Jesus' works were for only a limited time, that they think it presumptuous for any one to attempt to heal in the name of God and without the use of drugs. So successful has Christian Science been, however, that if its entire mission were but the healing of the sick, its Discoverer and Founder would still be entitled to the gratitude of a disease-burdened race; but fortunately this is not all. For nearly half a century now, the sick and the sinning have been healed, just as in the time of Jesus and the apostles, and we must not lose sight of the fact that the healing of sickness is but the "signs following"—the understanding of God which has ever been the goal of Christianity.

The coming of the Christ to human experience must result in the destruction of all evil, all that is unlike God, and it is because of this law of being that Christian Science necessarily includes the healing of sickness in its ministry of destroying sin. In the ninth chapter of Matthew the similarity of sickness and sin, and the identity of their source, is clearly set forth by the Master, in his answer to the scribes who accused him of blasphemy because he had said to the sick of the palsy, "Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee." "For whether is easier," he asked them, "to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?" In proof of this he bade the palsied man take up his bed and depart to his own house. What wonder, when his command was obeyed, that the multitudes "marveled, and glorified God"!

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