Article January 22, 1916 Issue

The person who starts with the premise that divine Principle,...

Robert S. Ross

Cortland (N. Y.) Standard

The person who starts with the premise that divine Principle, Love, is the one and only cause, will if consistent inevitably arrive at the conclusion that there can be no effect from any other cause. Surely sin, disease, and death are not effects of Life, Truth, and Love, which constitute Deity, and if they are not, they are not effects of anything. Therefore they are nothing claiming the reality and actuality of something. In other words, they are illusions or beliefs. In the proportion that the sinning and suffering realize that sin and sickness are not made by God and are therefore powerless to influence or harm them, in that proportion also do they become their master. It was this simple yet profound process of reasoning to which Christ Jesus referred when he said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

The declaration and demonstration of this spiritual fact did not, however, deter the Pharisees from ridiculing and persecuting Jesus. Indeed, it stirred so terrifically the belief in evil, alias the "carnal mind," that the spiritual advisers of those days cried out for the blood of the most spiritually and beneficently minded man the world has ever known. The calumny heaped on Jesus knew no bounds. "The reputation of Jesus," Mrs. Eddy writes on page 53 of Science and Health, "was the very opposite of his character. Why? Because the divine Principle and practice of Jesus were misunderstood." If the life and works of so great and good a man as the Nazarene could not escape pharisaical vilification and abuse, it is to be assumed that the attacks on Christian Science and Mrs. Eddy by a local evangelist can be endured without murmuring. Certain it is that there is nothing in the teachings of the Founder of Christianity to warrant the critic's views of what constitutes Christian discipleship.

Science and Health is based on the Bible, is coordinate with it, and is inseparable from it. In not the slightest detail does Christian Science depart from the pure idealism of Christ Jesus, the critic's statements to the contrary notwithstanding. And if your readers would like to know the facts about Mrs. Eddy, they will find them in "The Life of Mary Baker Eddy" by Sibyl Wilbur, which may be found in any public library. Suffice it to say that the world can never repay the debt it owes to Mrs. Eddy for reestablishing on earth the long lost art of primitive Christian healing.

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