Editorial April 22, 1916 Issue

"Now is Christ risen"

Archibald McLellan

Every now and then this question is put to the earnest seeker after Truth: Why, if Christian Science teaches that there is no death, do its followers pass through this experience? The question may be asked by a caviler against this teaching, or by one whose new-found faith in a God who is Love has been rudely shocked by the seeming failure of Christian Science to meet the test; but the answer is one and the same—the prevalence of material sense over spiritual understanding; in other words, comparatively few people have risen above the belief that death is a necessity. The logicalness of this position is plain when it is remembered for how many thousands of years mankind as a whole accepted death and decay as an inevitable sequence to material existence, and made preparations therefor. Consequently, though complete demonstration of the teaching that Life alone is real and death but an illusion, has not been attained in the half-century since this truth was promulgated by Mrs. Eddy, the progress made in this direction borders on the marvelous.

This tragedy of human experience, for such death is, seems the more unexplainable when it intrudes upon a home whose inmates are earnestly endeavoring to demonstrate the Christ-teaching, for then mortal sense takes up the apparent failure with the old hue and cry, "He saved others; himself he cannot save." The many proofs of the power of Truth to heal and to save which have been vouchsafed, are overshadowed or forgotten, and if through prejudice or ignorance, as sometimes happens, the case is dragged into court, the position of the Scientist is difficult indeed. Of himself he knows that Mrs. Eddy's contention is true, but to explain so that a public hampered by material thinking will understand that what has occurred is due, not to the employment of Christian Science, not to negligence on the part of the practitioner, the patient, or the family, but to the preponderance of mortal belief that death is inevitable and must be submitted to, is not easy. Particularly is this true in a community where Science is comparatively little known or when the family and friends are antagonistic, and hostile criticism and predictions of failure have to be contended with from the start. Then it is that the Christian Scientist sometimes asks himself why these things must be and wherein he has failed.

Truth never fails, but sometimes its exponents fail in their realization of its power, simply because, no matter how great their own faith may be, it is outbalanced for the time being by the sum total of mortal belief. Are they then to lose heart? Not at all. Christian Scientists do not go so far as to declare that complete demonstration over death is possible in this generation, because to claim this, as Mrs. Eddy points out, "is to assert what we have not proved" (Unity of Good, p. 40); but Christian Science does teach and its adherents believe that every overcoming of evil, whether of sin or sickness, is a step toward the ultimate vanquishment of this longstanding foe of mankind, and that when these trials of their faith come it is to strengthen their trust in the omnipotence of Truth. God is omnipotent, and this will be fully demonstrated when mankind unite in acknowledging it, instead of conceding, as the majority still do, that evil has power.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Editorial

"Risen with Christ"