Article February 3, 1917 Issue

After listening for a month to the denuciations uttered...

Thorwald Siegfried

Winlock (Wash.) Live Wire

After listening for a month to the denuciations uttered by a visiting evangelist in his references to Christian Science and Mrs. Eddy, it may be fairly presumed that some constructive information will be welcomed by your readers.

First it will be helpful to note the difference between the methods by which Christian Science is propagated among people, and those of other religions. If we consider the means by which a knowledge of mathematics is spread, we will find them quite similar to the means for making Christian Science known. Thus mathematicians, however willing they may be to communicate their knowledge, are not particularly anxious about those who prefer to remain in ignorance. One could hardly imagine an unwilling disciple coaxed or forced into union with a mathematical society; this is so because knowledge of numbers depends not upon opinion but upon understanding. The same is true of Christian Science. A most loving invitation to study Christian Science and to benefit by it is constantly extended by Scientists to all the world, but when the world accepts the invitation it will be of its own free will and not through subtle or bald coercion.

Again, with respect to Bible study Christian Science occupies a unique position. It neither indulges in fine-spun human theories that seek to limit the metaphors of the Bible to particular people and human events, nor does it accept mere opinion about the Bible,—opinion which is often as erroneous with an open as with a closed Bible. It does, however, take the Bible itself in the spirit in which it was written; and it may be safely asserted that no people are more rationally familiar with the Bible today than Christian Scientists. In the Sunday services of all Christian Science churches and societies about half of the words spoken are read from the ordinary King James Version of the Bible. The citations for these Lesson-Sermons are printed months in advance in The Christian Science Quarterly and are studied by Christian Scientists during the week before they are read in church, so that the inspired meaning of the passages may dawn upon their thought like Malachi's "Sun of righteousness ... with healing in his wings." This practice harmonizes with Mrs. Eddy's reference to the Bible as "the chart of life" (Science and Health, p. 24).

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