Article February 19, 1916 Issue

By an increasing number of unbiased sermon hearers it is...

David Anderson

The Ballarat (Australia) Courier

By an increasing number of unbiased sermon hearers it is now considered axiomatic that if one would learn something of what Christian Science is not, attention should be given to pulpit philippics of the "orthodox" divine. In an address as reported in The Ballarat Courier, a bishop put a question to his hearers which expressed a fallacy, and answered it for them in a misrepresentation of fact. "Why," the bishop asked, "do not Christian Scientists go to church?" "Because," he answered, "Christian Science says there is no such thing as sin, and therefore you do not need any such person as Saviour."

In reply I would say that Christian Scientists do go to church. In relative proportion of members, as well as in regularity of attendance and in devoutness of attention and participation in the service, they will compare favorably with churchgoers of the Anglican or any other denomination. They go to church to pray, and to worship and hold communion with God, a natural part of their daily lives which is not confined to Sunday observance. They go for the very reason cited by the bishop as desirable on the part of his congregation: "Because they want to bring themselves into closer touch with God and the unseen world."

Christian Science does not tell its devotees, any more than it tells its theological critics, that "there is no such thing as sin." As sin is neither God created nor God upheld, it is not an eternal verity of being, and so it is regarded in Christian Science as "unreal." Sin, being any want of conformity with or any transgression of the law of God (and Christian Scientists read into that definition the widest comprehensiveness), is painfully in evidence on every hand, and nobody is more alive to it as a present factor in human experience than the Christian Scientist, for he knows that to cast sin out of his own consciousness it must be grappled with and overcome. He knows also that if sin were today cast out of the thought of individual consciousness, of all humanity, there would be nothing left of it. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy says: "Since Jesus must have been tempted in all points, he, the immaculate, met and conquered sin in every form." "For victory over a single sin, we give thanks and magnify the Lord of Hosts." "Vibrating like a pendulum between sin and the hope of forgiveness,—selfishness and sensuality causing constant retrogression,—our moral progress will be slow. Waking to Christ's demand, mortals experience suffering. This causes them, even as drowning men, to make vigorous efforts to save themselves; and through Christ's precious love these efforts are crowned with success" (pp. 564, 568, 22).

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