Article February 26, 1916 Issue

An evangelist holding local services declared, according to...

John M. Tutt

Warrensburg (Mo.) Star-Journal

An evangelist holding local services declared, according to your report, that Mrs. Eddy taught the non-existence of hell. Mrs. Eddy taught most emphatically that hell is an experience inseparable from sin, and that the sinner inevitably must suffer. She did not, however, subscribe to the ecclesiastical opinion of a material place beyond the grave filled with actual fire and brimstone. Christian Science does not operate to frighten sinners into being good. Being a restatement of the teaching of the Master, Christian Science is a religion not of fear, but of love.

Jesus taught both heaven and hell. The former he declared to be a divine state of consciousness. He definitely repudiated the Pharisees' belief in a material place called heaven by his reply to their inquiry as to "when the kingdom of God should come." He said: "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation; neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." Inferentially, then, if heaven is a state of divine Mind, hell, heaven's opposite, must be the state of mortal mind which Paul declared to be "enmity against God." The question of whether there is a place called hell, pales before the great fact that the sinner is suffering right now.

If one is consistent in showing sinners the errors of their way, and how to overcome sin through Christ, he will be found lifting men from the hell of their own making into the kingdom of heaven on earth for which Jesus taught his disciples to pray. On page 160 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" Mrs. Eddy has written: "I am asked, 'Is there a hell?' Yes, there is a hell for all who persist in breaking the golden rule or in disobeying the commandments of God. . . . The advanced psychist knows that this hell is mental, not material, and that the Christian has no part in it. Only the makers of hell burn in their fire."

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Our critic condemns Christian Science as unchristian
February 26, 1916
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