Article July 29, 1916 Issue

Perhaps the principal cause of our reverend critic's failure...

Carl E. Herring

Kearney (Neb.) Times

Perhaps the principal cause of our reverend critic's failure to understand Christian Science is found in his inability to perceive the difference between the real and the unreal, and as this distinction constitutes the groundwork of Christian Science teaching, it is well worth our while to consider it. This pastor is not alone in regarding the teaching of the non existence of evil, sickness, and sorrow as an absurdity, and often the earnest searcher after something better than the husks he is feeding upon is diverted from a study of Christian Science at the outset, because pain and sin seem to him not only real, but so real that a denial of their existence is an indictment of the sanity of the whole teaching of Science.

In the first place let us approach the text—book of Christian Science, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy, with a view to seeing what it actually teaches and not for the purpose of finding a spot which will seem to justify us in throwing it down and declaring the whole thing an absurdity. If Shakespeare's works had to undergo the grilling process to which Science and Health has been subjected, the bard of Avon would wish that Bacon had indeed been the author of his plays.

At the outset an author is entitled to have attached to words the meaning he gives them, especially when, as in the case of Mrs. Eddy, such meaning is in accordance with the usage of the best authors and lexicographers. Therefore, when she uses the words substance and reality it must be understood that these words mean, as Webster's dictionary says, "that which underlies all outward manifestations." She is not writing a treatise on botany or zoology, in which words may be loosely used and yet convey the meaning for the subject under discussion, but she is writing on the subject of God and man, and constantly with reference to things in their relation to eternality.

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