Article May 10, 1919 Issue

It should be perfectly possible for our reverend critic to...

Joseph E. Badger

Montreal (Canada) Gazette

It should be perfectly possible for our reverend critic to differ absolutely from the views held by "hundreds of thousands of followers of Christian Science"—to quote his own words—without its being necessary for him to impute insanity to their views and the teachings of their religion. In the nineteen centuries which have elapsed since the commencement of the Christian era almost innumerable phases of what is termed Christian thought have been expressed in as many innumerable dogmas, each of which has been the orthodox view just as long as popular opinion has supported it. These varying shades of dogma-made Christianity were heretical in one century, orthodox in the next. John Wycliffe is known as "the first heretic;" the Christian Scientists of to-day are apparently the last, according to this critic.

Now it so happens that there is in the Bible the definition of a Christian, which the opponents of Christian Science are not too eager to quote. It is contained in the gospel of John in the declaration of Christ Jesus that those who believed on him would be able to do the works which he did, and it is repeated in the gospel of Mark in the enumeration of the signs which should follow those who believed. In these two passages, to select these two alone, Christ Jesus made the power to heal the sick and work other miracles the test of a man's faith and so necessarily of his Christianity. If these words mean anything at all, they are the declaration of the fact that a man's faith, and consequently his Christianity, is in exact proportion to his ability to overcome the evidence of evil and materiality; in a word, to heal the sick, to bind up the broken-hearted, to reform the sinner; for, in the words of Christ Jesus himself, "whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?"

This is the doctrine of Christian Science as taught by Mrs. Eddy from one end to the other of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." It is not fair to impute that Christian Science parents would neglect or ever have neglected their children who were suffering with fever, or any other disease for that matter, "which they contended did not exist." "Sickness," writes Mrs. Eddy in Science and Health (p. 460), "is neither imaginary nor unreal,—that is, to the frightened, false sense of the patient. Sickness is more than fancy; it is solid conviction. It is therefore to be dealt with through right apprehension of the truth of being." Just exactly in proportion as a mortal apprehends this truth of being he is transformed by the renewing of the mind, and presents his body, "a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God," as the brethren were besought to do by Paul in the twelfth chapter of Romans.

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