Article November 2, 1918 ISSUE

One vital difference, the difference between matter and...

The Christian Science Monitor

One vital difference, the difference between matter and Spirit, lay between the teachings of Christ Jesus and the scholastic theology of his day; but that difference covered the whole distance between understanding the essential vitality of Truth and preaching ineffectual theories. Men turned from the tabernacles to the first Christian because they saw that his religion could give them help,—simple, direct, immediate. By parable and demonstration he taught them that God could not produce anything unlike Himself, and they responded to the logical power of this truth, in recovery from sickness, liberation from sin, deliverance from danger, and resurrection from death. His religion, in short, met the test of practicality; and when he sent out his disciples, he insisted that they, too, must give practical proof, by healing the sick and casting out evils, that they had understood his teachings. Speaking of his commission to them, Mrs. Eddy says, on page 31 of Science and Health: "First in the list of Christian duties, he taught his followers the healing power of Truth and Love. He attached no importance to dead ceremonies. It is the living Christ, the practical Truth, which makes Jesus 'the resurrection and the life' to all who follow him in deed."

In this hour of the world's testing, old material reliances, false modes and methods, are being abandoned, one by one, because of their disclosed inutility. In such a testing time, a man's religion must, like everything else, furnish a reason for its being. Can it stand the test of practical application? Can it help him who has been summoned by the necessity of the hour, from the superficialities, to answer the challenge of war and death? Obviously the day of theoretical Christianity is set.

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