Article November 24, 1917 Issue

The revivalist holding local services is reported as saying...

B. W. Parmenter

The Lawton (Okla.) News

The revivalist holding local services is reported as saying that the Savior never contradicted himself; that he did not "give a gospel of a vicarious atonement for sin on a bloody cross to eleven disciples and a gospel of no sin and no atonement to Mary Baker Eddy." Mrs. Eddy does not teach "no atonement." On page 96 of "Miscellaneous Writings" by Mary Baker Eddy is the following: "Do I believe in the atonement of Christ? I do; and this atonement becomes more to me since it includes man's redemption from sickness as well as from sin. I reverence and adore Christ as never before." All through her writings she sustains the doctrine of atonement, and she sets forth her position, I submit, as clear as the English language can make it. Why then would not a minister of the gospel take her at her plain words and give them the plain meaning that ought to be given them?

As to the assertion that Mrs. Eddy teaches "no sin," permit me to say that at every church service, by her direction, the entire congregation prays in unison to be delivered from evil. In the Church Manual of The First Church of Christ, Scientist (Art. VIII, Sect. 4), she says, "It shall be the duty of every member of this Church to pray each day: 'Thy kingdom come;' let the reign of divine Truth, Life, and Love be established in me, and rule out of me all sin." On page 19 of the same book, setting forth the objects for which the church was designed, she says it was for the purpose of "healing and saving the world from sin and death." In "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 189) she states, "For man to know Life as it is, namely God, the eternal good, gives him not merely a sense of existence, but an accompanying consciousness of spiritual power that subordinates matter and destroys sin, disease, and death;" on page 261 she says that "mortals suffer from the wrong they commit, whether intentionally or ignorantly;" and she adds that "every effect and amplification of wrong will revert to the wrongdoer, until he pays his full debt to divine law, and the measure he has meted is measured to him again, full, pressed down, and running over. Surely 'the way of the transgressor is hard.' " How can any man circulate the report that Mary Baker Eddy either ignores sin or teaches there is no sin. She teaches that spiritual power and the "law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" destroys and overcomes sin, suffering, grief, the carnal mind, all mortality, the flesh, lust, and the devil, and that there is no other rule or right way to these splendid accomplishments.

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