Article January 8, 1916 Issue

Christian Science teaches how to destroy sin and disease,...

Thomas E. Boland—Easton, Pa.

The Sunday Call

Christian Science teaches how to destroy sin and disease, not how to ignore them. It teaches that the only way of escape from evil is through overcoming it in the consciousness of the individual; but it does not stop here, for it also points a practical way by which each person may for himself accomplish this overcoming here and now. Christian Science not only teaches that sinful and discordant conditions should be overcome, which is patent to everybody, but what is much more to the point, it presents a universally usable method for accomplishing this much desired result. No one can study the life of Jesus the Christ without reaching the logical—yes, inevitable—conclusion that his mission was to bring to sinful and suffering humanity a full salvation from all its afflictions. Christians profess to believe that Christ Jesus was the Saviour of the world. Jesus placed much more emphasis on his works than on his words. His works were the proof of the truth of his words. He said: "If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him."

Many persons are first attracted to Christian Science because of the spiritual truth they perceive in it. A still greater number come because they are looking for relief from distressing physical conditions, from which in a large percentage of cases they have vainly sought relief elsewhere. That a smaller number should be looking for spiritual help than for escape from pain is not strange; for while it may not be complimentary to humanity, it is nevertheless true that people are more generally eager for release from physical disability than from sinful and immoral conditions. Those who come to Christian Science with a spiritual hunger find a satisfying truth, and it is the experience of thousands who come for physical help that they receive not only the sought for aid, but in addition a spiritual impulse which they rightly come to value far above any freedom from distressing physical conditions, however welcome such relief may be.

Christian Science has brought the message of an enlightened and uplifted faith in God and the "lively hope," followed by the actual experience, of release from disease to vast numbers as dead spiritually as the "dry bones" of Ezekiel's vision which constituted the critic's text, and to multitudes who were the victims of supposedly incurable disease, for whom hope was as much lost as Ezekiel declares it was to the house of Israel. The message which Jesus brought to the world was sneered at by the pulpit in his time. Because the same message brought today by Christian Science is meeting a similar experience, is no more proof now of the falsity of the message than it was nineteen centuries ago. Nor will ecclesiastical opposition in this day be any more effective than in the time of the humble Nazarene, in preventing this message of hope and healing from reaching and blessing mankind.

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