Article July 12, 1919 Issue

The article on "Sects of To-day" interested me greatly

Marie Hartman—Amsterdam, Holland (translation)

Bergopwaarts

The article on "Sects of To-day" interested me greatly. The critic rightly recommends studying the writings of the adherents of a movement as the best means of forming an opinion of it. I therefore feel confident that you will allow me to point out to your readers a place in the author's argumentation where he does not accurately state an important teaching of Christian Science. He calls "the notion of sin and death as that which ought not to be ... a truth which still has been preserved in the Christian doctrine," and continues as follows: "As a matter of fact, however, the Christian churches are compromising with sin, and have adapted themselves practically and theoretically to all sorts of sinful conditions. Christian Science has excavated this old truth and exaggerated it to the nonexistence of sin."

This, now, is not exact. Christian Science not only theoretically but practically does justice to the truth about evil as "that which ought not to be," because this teaching dares to go to the root of this problem. If God, as the Scriptures say, is the only cause and creator, only that which proceeds from Him and, therefore, first must be found in Him, can be absolutely true and real. Christian Science understands too much of God's completeness, omnipotence, and eternality to consider for a single moment a destructive element like evil as an attribute or expression of God. This teaching ascribes, therefore, an illusive character to evil, as not proceeding from God and therefore not belonging to the eternal, indestructible reality. Christian Science does not say that evil in all its appearances does not seem very real to unenlightened human thinking, but it does say and demonstrate that the coming of the Christ, the saving Truth, dispels and destroys evil, all the false beliefs about God and His creation.

Jesus said of the devil, of the so-called personification of evil, he "abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him ... he is a liar, and the father of it;" and in his life and works he demonstrated how all that is not real and true yields to the consciousness of God's allness. Christian Science does not exaggerate a truth which Christendom has accepted. It teaches how indeed to live this truth. This teaching realizes that the divinely sanctioned is indeed so real and mighty that man can put his trust in it, and therefore has no need to compromise with evil. It teaches its adherents that they do not pray in vain, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil," because obedience to and the consciousness of man's oneness with God, who is Truth and Life and Love, does redeem them from all evil. Christian Science is the fulfillment of what Jesus taught; it is not the exaggeration of any doctrine, but the simple, practical Science of being.

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