Article July 17, 1915 Issue

There appeared in a recent issue a résumé of a sermon on...

Ezra W. Palmer

Loveland (Col.) Herald

There appeared in a recent issue a résumé of a sermon on Christian Science delivered by a clergyman at Binghamton, N. Y. While the sermon was free from vindictiveness, it gave a number of erroneous impressions of Christian Science. It stated that "Mrs. Eddy held to the Bible while she perverted its teachings," a statement absurd on its face, since it is impossible to be loyal to the Bible and its teachings and at the same time pervert these teachings. Mrs. Eddy never perverted the Scriptures, and her teachings, when understood, make the Holy Scriptures glow with new beauty and spiritual life. Mrs. Eddy laid stress on healing the sick by prayer, and in so doing she had the authority and precedent of Christ Jesus, his disciples, the apostles and prophets. Christ Jesus commanded his followers to heal the sick and preach the gospel. Surely it cannot be argued that obeying the Master constitutes a perversion of the Holy Scriptures.

This preacher deems it absurd that Mrs. Eddy should teach that evil, sin, disease, and death are errors of the human mind, but the sermon as printed nowhere shows what this critic believes sin, disease, and death to be. He assumes they are something else than errors of the carnal mind, but carefully avoids telling the readers of your paper what that something else is. The fact is, no teaching of the Bible is more conclusive than that sin, disease, and death are errors of the human mind. Jesus emphatically declared that the whole duty of man was to love God and his fellow man. How can we love except through mentality? He repeatedly pointed out that we understand God and gain eternal life through believing, knowing, and having faith. Can we believe, understand, have faith, except through intelligence, which is the primary quality of mind? Paul indicated that regeneration was a mental unfoldment, when he said, "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind;" also, "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus."

Since, therefore, spiritual unity with God is gained through thought-processes of knowledge and understanding of things divine, it of necessity follows that whatever obstructs or obscures this spiritual vision must be error in mentality. This Paul clearly taught in that immortal eighth chapter of Romans, when he said: "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. . . . For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." In that wonderful classification of the results of erroneous evil thinking and the fruits of spiritual understanding, in the fifth chapter of Galatians, Paul again clearly draws the line of demarcation between fleshly, evil thoughts and the divine ideas of God which come to inspire, bless, and save men when their minds are open to receive the things of Spirit. "The works of the flesh," classified in this chapter, are the evil, false, vicious, perverted beliefs of the human or mortal mind. "The fruit of the Spirit" is inspired thoughts of God, which purify, elevate, and regenerate mankind.

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