Article October 14, 1916 Issue

It is a riddle how our clerical critic can write that...

Marie Hartman—The Hague, Holland. Translation

Nieuw Keikelijk Weekblad

It is a riddle how our clerical critic can write that Christian Science is liable to weaken morality and that it abandons the distinction between good and evil. In no other teaching than Christian Science do we find the line between good and evil so sharply drawn or so rigidly adhered to. For the notion that a small sin does not matter, there is no place in Christian Science, because it considers every sin as disobedience to God, and for that reason as guilt. The purpose of Christian Science is the same as the apostle Paul outlines for himself in the tenth chapter of II Corinthians, namely, to cast down "imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God," and to bring "into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ."

According to the Scriptures, Christian Science considers God as the only creator, as the cause and Principle of all that is. His emanation is therefore all that is true, and includes all that is real. What proceeds from God must express His nature, which is eternal good, Love, Life, and as John says, the Light; all His expressions are good,—are rays of the divine Light. Obedience to the good, the true, the eternal,—to God's law as Jesus revealed it in the destruction of sin, sickness, and death,—transforms man by the renewing of the mind, makes him "put off the old man with his deeds," teaches him to serve God only and to partake of Jesus' saving grace.

Christian Science does not consider that as an expression of God which tries to prevent a man from obeying, serving, and honoring God. That which would make him believe that God and all which proceeds from Him are not supreme here and now, and induce him to take another than the narrow way "which leadeth unto life," is of the devil, of which Jesus said, "He is a liar, and the father of it." Since evil does not proceed from God, it cannot be numbered among the things true, eternal, and unchanging, and for that reason Christian Science does not call it real. By this Christian Science does not say that to the limited, unenlightened human consciousness evil does not exist, but that, on the basis of its unreality, it can be overcome by learning to know the truth which shall make mankind free. To conceive of evil as unreal can never lead to considering it as good, or not so bad, or even excusable; on the contrary, it teaches a man to be on his guard for the claims and temptations of evil, and to realize the power which his understanding of the truth gives him over it.

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