Article July 15, 1916 Issue

Judging from the excerpts of a sermon, the preacher's...

Daniel M. Ely

The Dispatch

Judging from the excerpts of a sermon, the preacher's attack is not on Christian Science but on his own concept of it. Christian Science eschews all forms of suggestion, occultism, or magnetic influence, and depends entirely upon a spiritual understanding of God's law. In it there is to be found nothing of the heathen religion of India. It is not based, as the preacher declares, "on the statement that God is everything and that matter is an illusion of mortal mind."

Christian Science teaches that God is Life, Truth, and Love; that He is All-in-all, and only those things which emanate from Him and partake of His nature are real and eternal. It teaches that because God is Spirit, His creation, man and the universe, must of necessity be spiritual and not material. This teaching is in accordance with the first chapter of Genesis. Christian Science does not teach that "the way to be rid of sin is to believe there is no sin." On page 327 of Science and Health its author in speaking of sin says: "The way to escape the misery of sin is to cease sinning. There is no other way. Sin is the image of the beast to be effaced by the sweat of agony."

The man to whom Mrs. Eddy refers as incapable of sin is not the material, mortal man, who, as David says, was shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin, but the real or spiritual man created in "the image of God." Christian Science does not make "liars of people" when it denies those things which are unlike God. Jesus declared that he came to destroy the works of the devil, whom he defined as one who "abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him."

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

Judging from the excerpts of a sermon, the preacher's...

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access