Article July 6, 1918 Issue

Changing One's Views

WILLIAM FRYE WHITE

When once we grasp the full significance of the fact taught in Christian Science that human existence, with all the phenomena peculiar to it, is mental, it is not difficult to understand that healings worthy of expressions of gratitude at Wednesday evening meetings or in our periodicals need not necessarily be of physical or bodily disease and the suffering incident to it. Any experience out of which, through which, or by which, mortal mind is forced to humble itself and bow to the reality of God, good, as All-in-all, and therefore as ever present Principle, constitutes a healing.

The writer remembers the first Wednesday evening meeting which he ever attended in our wonderful Mother Church, and how he was awed by all that he saw and heard. There was one testimony given by a lady that night which made a deep impression upon his mind. She told how Christian Science had crossed her path on different occasions and how she had ignored it and refused to have anything to do with it because of a deep-seated prejudice which she entertained against Mrs. Eddy, due to many stories she had heard about her. Finally came a time when sickness attacked her, a sickness which did not surrender to material remedies. Then in some manner Christian Science was again brought to her attention, and she reluctantly began the reading of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy. She was eventually relieved of the bodily sickness, but not until she became conscious that her prejudice against Mrs. Eddy and her teachings had been destroyed. In relating her experience, joy and gratitude were expressed, not so much for the relief from sickness, which to her illumined sense was only an incident, as for the destruction in her thought of that unjust prejudice which, she comprehended, was not an offense against Mrs. Eddy herself, but rather against Principle, God,—the foundation of all Mrs. Eddy's teachings.

This lady's denial or refusal of Principle resulted in a form of bodily pain and suffering. The denial of Principle is sin; for every denial of God necessarily carries with it an affirmation of the existence of some other power or reality. This affirmation constitutes a specific breach of the First Commandment, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Mrs. Eddy says in "Retrospection and Introspection" (p. 67), "Sin was, and is, the lying supposition that life, substance, and intelligence are both material and spiritual, and yet are separate from God." Sin always eventuates in suffering. The certainly of such suffering is constantly reiterated throughout the Bible. Mrs. Eddy explains this to us again and again throughout her writings. In Science and Health (p. 6) she says, "We cannot escape the penalty due for sin;" and further she says, "To cause suffering as the result of sin, is the means of destroying sin."