Article June 17, 1916 Issue

In a report of the sermon of an evangelist at Port Carbon,...

Thomas E. Boland

Pottsville (Pa.) Republican

In a report of the sermon of an evangelist at Port Carbon, reference is made to Christian Science as being a "new-fangled gospel," on which I would ask the courtesy of brief comment. The month of February, 1916, marked the fiftieth anniversary of Mrs. Eddy's sudden and remarkable restoration to health from the effects of a fall. While in a very serious condition physically, she called for her Bible and her eyes fell on the account of the healing by Jesus of the palsied man. Mrs. Eddy has said of this experience: "The lost chord of Truth (healing, as of old) I caught consciously from the divine harmony, vibrating its own sweet music. It was to me a revelation of Truth,—God; and Science, explaining the Principle of this divine harmony, enabled me to understand it, and to systematize and demonstrate Truth" (The Christian Science Journal, June, 1887). She perceived she was healed, arose, dressed, and presented herself to friends who had gathered fearing at any time to hear the worst from the sufferer's bedside.

This was a half-century ago; not long, it is true, in the world's history, and yet long enough for Christian Science to have been tested and tried in the fierce heat of the world's melting-pot. Its growth has been the religious marvel of the age and is conclusive proof of its value. Mrs. Eddy's words as quoted above, however, show her thought that she had simply discovered something, "the lost chord of Truth," which healed as of old, healed as in the time of Jesus. And that is what Christian Science is,—the primitive, spiritual healing practised by Jesus and his disciples and followers for nearly three centuries after Jesus had left the earth.

It will, however, be remembered that Jesus spoke in this way of his spiritual self: "Before Abraham was, I am," meaning that the truth he brought to the world antedated Abraham and was in fact, from its very nature, eternal. The body of truth about God and man in God's likeness, for which the title Christian Science stands, is like all truth, eternal; and it is found now, as this truth always has been found, regenerating the sinful, healing the diseased, and giving hope to the discouraged, through its message of efficacious, divine, healing Love.

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