Article February 17, 1917 Issue

The News recently gave notice of a series of sermons to be...

Thorwald Siegfried

The Tacoma (Wash.) News

The News recently gave notice of a series of sermons to be delivered in one of the local churches, and in it linked the names Christian Science, Theosophy, Spiritualism, New Thought, and Unity in a way likely to leave the impression that these movements have much in common, which is not the case.

Christian Science claims uniqueness for itself in the same way and for the same reasons that Christ Jesus claimed it for his teachings. When speaking of the Christ Jesus "the door of the sheep," Jesus said, "All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them." He honored the teachings of the ancient prophets and repeatedly quoted from them, so the statement just given must mean that some vital element was lacking in their work. That vital element is found not only in his statement, "It is the spirit that quickeneth," but also in the immediate context, "the flesh profiteth nothing."

Mrs. Eddy discovered the scientific basis of Christian teaching and works; but this does not mean that she claims to have understood more of Christianity than Jesus himself, for she writes: "Jesus of Nazareth was the most scientific man that ever trod the globe. He plunged beneath the material surface of things, and found the spiritual cause" (Science and Health, p. 313). Neither does it mean that Christian Scientists have any monopoly on truth. On the contrary, truth is everywhere expressed, of which only that thought can be conscious which in greater or less degree is willing and able to plunge "beneath the material surface." Of the ancient prophets Mrs. Eddy says that they "caught glorious glimpses of the Messiah, or Christ, which baptized these seers in the divine nature, the essence of Love;" but she says of modern systems of human philosophy that they are "mainly predicated of matter, and afford faint gleams of God, or Truth" (pp. 333, 144).

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