Article July 7, 1917 Issue

Christian Science, or Christ's Christianity, differentiates...

Robert S. Ross

Buffalo (N. Y.) Express

Christian Science, or Christ's Christianity, differentiates between the temporal and the eternal, the material and the spiritual, the mortal and the immortal. Thus, when on page 388 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes that "food does not affect the absolute Life of man," she does not refer to human so-called life, but to the spiritual, absolute Life of the ideal man, God's image and likeness. Nobody would think of administering food to a lifeless body. In order for a body to appear to need food, the material sense of existence called the human consciousness must be present, proving that the demand for food does not emanate from the body itself, but from the age-long inherited human belief in so-called material existence, wherein matter is appealed to to support matter.

Matter has no real intelligence to help or to harm. In proof of this, the greatest scientist that ever lived said, "There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man." In other words, food is beneficial or harmful only in proportion to one's belief in its power for good or evil. No consistent student of the New Testament will deny that the teaching of Christianity exhorts mortals to overcome the tendency to lean on the broken reed of matter for life and happiness. Because of the reluctance of mortals to heed the divine command, however, the process of putting off the "old man" must necessarily be a gradual one. Ultimately it will be seen that the "bread of life" (spiritual understanding) is the only real sustenance of man. In this, as in everything else, the Christianity of Jesus and the Christianity of Science and Health are in complete accord.

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