Article August 19, 1916 Issue

Crooked Places Made Straight

MARGARET MACKAY CREIGHTON

IN reading the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New, we occasionally meet the word stumbling-block, which is defined by lexicographers as a difficulty or impediment. Taken figuratively, it might mean a wrong interpretation. For instance, a Bible verse separated from its context might be used to prove opposite conditions, whereas with its context it could not well be wrongly interpreted.

The same rule applies to the reading of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy. I have in thought a fair-minded critic who refused to pronounce unreasonable any statement in Science and Health until he understood the basis from which it was made; he would not pass an opinion on the book until he had read it through to get the author's meaning. In all fairness to our Leader, it should be said that any one who seeks to gain her viewpoint, can have no quarrel with her teaching. The affirmations stand through all time. Good and evil do not mix; whatever opposes itself to absolute good is a negation.

A newspaper recently published an item to the effect that no intelligent clergyman now believed in a future Hades; that in the old country, at least, such views had not been held for a generation. In commenting upon this change in scholastic theology, it was remarked that the doctrine came into existence through a wrong translation of the Bible, as it was not in the original manuscript. Since a corrupt translation of the Bible is credited with being the stumbling-block which has caused years of controversy and generated an uncontrollable fear of evil both here and hereafter, how grateful we should be that the world has received Christian Science at first hand!

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