Article May 13, 1916 Issue

In a recent issue the Journal credited a critic with the...

Robert S. Ross

Newburgh (N. Y.) Journal

In a recent issue the Journal credited a critic with the following statement in a sermon: "A certain woman, Mary Baker Eddy, rose up and flourished and founded a church. She even went so far as to say that if Jesus Christ had been more perfect in Christian Science, he would not have died."

In reply thereto, permit me to state most emphatically that Mrs. Eddy did not make that statement. If she said that Jesus could have avoided the crucifixion, that is another matter. Jesus himself said practically the same thing. In avoiding the crucifixion, however, Jesus would have deprived the world of his marvelous and much needed demonstration of eternal life. "Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But," he continued, "how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?" The man who was Christianly scientific enough to walk on the waves, go through closed doors, and pass unseen through the mob that was about to throw him over the precipice, was certainly capable of escaping the clutches of the Roman soldiers who seized him in the garden of Gethsemane.

No, Mrs. Eddy was too humble a disciple of Christ to make such a vainglorious statement. "Today," she writes of herself on page ix of the Preface to Science and Health, "though rejoicing in some progress, she still finds herself a willing disciple at the heavenly gate, waiting for the Mind of Christ." It would be the height of presumptuousness for one to weigh in the balance the works of Christ Jesus without first arriving at his plane of spiritual understanding. But even then the trials and triumphs over self necessary to this accomplishment would inevitably make one a servant instead of a critic. The farther one follows the path Jesus trod, the more one must marvel at the stupendous task so successfully undertaken by him nearly twenty centuries ago.

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