Article June 2, 1917 Issue

In an interesting communication to your paper a correspondent...

Henry Van Arsdale

Monrovia (Cal.) Messenger

In an interesting communication to your paper a correspondent brings out some points as to the method by which cures of physical ailments are brought about by various systems claiming to heal disease, but he misses the great truth that it is the theology of Christian Science which is accomplishing the works done in its name. From the time of those imitators of "Moses the man of God," the necromancers of Egypt before the court of Pharaoh, down through the attempts of the seven sons of Sceva to pattern the works of Paul, to the present day, those who would substitute man for God have insisted that power has its source outside of the infinite. Christian Science teaches that power belongs to God alone, and that whatever of this power the human mind manifests must be predicated upon some understanding of the divine Mind; that outside of this understanding everything is entirely within the realm of belief, and any seeming results produced are merely the results of the belief.

When Jesus was charged by the Pharisees with casting out devils by "Beelzebub the prince of the devils,"—that is, that his healing works were wrought by means other than recourse to God,—Jesus refuted for all time the arguments of those who believed that it is possible to resort to any other source when he said: "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; ... and if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand? And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast them out? therefore they shall be your judges. But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you." This is the important part of the healing and regenerative work of Christian Science, that it brings the kingdom of God to the individual.

In his extremity Paul cried: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." To Paul, Jesus Christ was the Wayshower to that understanding which must eventually, with every one of us, take the place of belief. Mrs. Eddy writes: "If God were understood instead of being merely believed, this understanding would establish health" (Science and Health, p. 203). The work of Christian Science is to inculcate an understanding of God, the understanding which Jesus possessed and which enabled him to speak "as one having authority." This separated him from the thaumaturgists, ancient and modern.

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