Article September 22, 1917 Issue

Indiscriminate quoting from the Bible is one of the...

Duncan Sinclair

Partick (Scotland) Gazette

Indiscriminate quoting from the Bible is one of the most futile of processes. It hardly ever carries conviction with it. Everybody knows that passages have time and again been torn from the pages of the Bible to defend the most unchristian acts and to bolster up the most irrational dogmatic positions. Not only so, but the almost innumerable Christian sects in existence differ more or less from one another on the interpretation of some part or parts of the Bible, oftentimes of comparatively little importance. Now, why is this? It has come about largely because of the fact that the Bible has been read without a clear understanding of the true nature of Deity. Mrs. Eddy says, "God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love" (Science and Health, P. 468). Christians will readily admit the truth of that comprehensive definition. Christian Scientists always proceed to the interpretation of the Bible with the truth about God before them. In no other way does a rational rendering of the Scriptures become possible to them. The Bible contains the record of the gradual discovery of God to the human race. It relates many of the spiritual experiences of those who have become enlightened to a greater or less degree as to God's nature; and it often tells of the folly of the human mind, enthralled in the false beliefs of material sense. Unless one brings to the interpretation of all such recorded experience understanding, to some extent, of the absolute truth about God, one is almost certain to fall into all manner of quite irrational positions.

Let me add, in conclusion, that Christian Science is entirely consistent in all the deductions it draws from the definition of God given above, a definition strictly in accord with the Scriptures generally and the teachings of Christ Jesus particularly. Thus, since God is infinite Life, there cannot possibly exist, as reality, anything which claims to be Life's opposite, no matter how strongly mortals may believe it to be otherwise.

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