Article September 7, 1918 Issue

It is a pity that our reverend critic in quoting Mrs. Eddy's...

M. Scott Till—Brighton, England

East Sussex News

It is a pity that our reverend critic in quoting Mrs. Eddy's words does not quote them from her writings, for his rendering of what Mrs. Eddy said she understood to be the spiritual sense of the Lord's Prayer has thus lost a good deal. He questions: "What is the message of Christian Science for the limbless, the sightless, and the heroic sufferers generally?" The message is as Jesus gave it, "These signs shall follow them that believe, ... They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." Mrs. Eddy, on page 38 of her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," regarding these same words, writes: "Who believes him? He was addressing his disciples, yet he did not say, 'These signs shall follow you,' but them—'them that believe' in all time to come."

Our critic is troubled because Christian Scientists are proving these words of Jesus to be true, and they are demonstrating their truth by holding their thought steadfastly upon creation as God made it; namely, man in His own image; and this perfect view of man dissolves a veritable mirage of horrors which were never placed in God's creation. But let it be understood that this perfect reflection of God's idea which Christian Scientists hold to is not reflected forth from a magic mirror as used by the Lady of Shallot, whose mirror the reverend critic suggests Christian Scientists are peering into; for poor Lady of Shallot became "half sick of shadows" before her mirror "cracked from side to side!"

Christian Scientists are not using any such magic mirror, but they are seeing a reflected likeness of the divine creation which Mrs. Eddy uses as an illustration on page 515 ofScience and Health: "Your mirrored reflection is your own image or likeness. if you lift a weight, your reflection does this also. If you speak, the lips of this likeness move in accord with yours. Now compare man before the mirror to his divine Principle, God. Call the mirror divine Science, and call man the reflection. Then note how true, according to Christian Science, is the reflection to its original. As the reflection of yourself appears in the mirror, so you, being spiritual, are the reflection of God. The substance, Life, intelligence, Truth, and Love, which constitute Deity, are reflected by His creation; and when we subordinate the false testimony of the corporeal senses to the facts of Science, we shall see this true likeness and reflection everywhere."

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