Article December 28, 1918 Issue

Rarely is one allowed the doubtful privilege of reading a...

Robert G. Steel

Grand Rapids (Mich.) News

Rarely is one allowed the doubtful privilege of reading a letter from the pen of a minister of the gospel so replete with statements which dishonor God, discredit Christ Jesus, and repudiate the whole Bible, as the one which appeared in a recent issue attacking the editorial, "A Mad World," reprinted from The Christian Science Monitor.

It is the height of absurdity that after nineteen centuries of Christian teaching and in the most thoroughly Christianized nation in the world, the churches should be closed because of the fear of a so-called epidemic and the foolish belief that the power of God has suddenly become less than that of a microbe. It is equally preposterous to find a Christian minister so under the mesmeric spell of the materialism of medical so-called science that he is willing to concede more power to a drug than to Deity. Had what is known as orthodox theology been more concerned in teaching the spiritual fact of a Godlike man than in perpetuating the material fable of a manlike God, we would have been spared the humiliation of reading at many church entrances the last few weeks the legend, "Closed on account of the epidemic." Rather would such an epidemic have "died a bornin'," and the legend, "Closed on account of the churches," formed a fitting epitaph.

That fear is the foundation of disease and inharmony is made plain in constantly recurring texts throughout the Bible. Job said the thing he greatly feared had come upon him, indicating that the fear of evil had brought its manifestation in discordant conditions. Fear made the rod which Moses hurled to the ground seemingly become a serpent, but when he fearlessly handled it, it became a rod again. It was the faith and understanding that knows no fear which enabled the three Hebrew boys to come unscathed through the fiery furnace; which preserved Daniel in the den of lions; which allowed men to escape unharmed from the boiling oil.

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