Article August 16, 1919 Issue

There is a story of an old-fashioned minister who...

Louis E. Scholl in

Tacoma (Wash.) Times

There is a story of an old-fashioned minister who preached a sermon against women "doing up" their hair, taking as his text, "Topknot come down." When one of his hearers indignantly insisted that there was no such text in the Bible, the defender of the faith triumphantly pointed to the verse in Matthew which reads, "Let him which is on the housetop not come down." With almost equal perspicacity the chronic critics of Mrs. Eddy and of Christian Science are often found quoting isolated statements, or even parts of sentences from Science and Health and holding them up to ridicule. In two paid advertisements a self-styled "noted evangelist" blundered in much the same way by holding up to ridicule part of a sentence from Science and Health, which he quoted with no regard for the capitalization as used by Mrs. Eddy.

Now every man has a perfect right to his opinion on religious subjects, but for this critic to call all who differ with his way of thinking scoffers, bigots, and fanatics, is placing his own teaching in a light where it will not attract the serious attention, nor command the respect, of intelligent people. Although this seems to be the open season for professional revivalists to attack Christian Science, it is not likely that there is a very great demand for abuse of this sort from those who attend these meetings, especially at a time when the average individual is looking for a clear light to guide him out of the darkness of present day strife and turmoil. Christian Scientists, moreover, do not become very much "fussed" over these attacks upon their teaching, for they have become somewhat accustomed to them and are too familiar with their effect upon the average audience or reader to have any fear of them. It is only right, however, that when there is a misrepresentation it should be corrected. This critic says he said, "Heaven is a place," and he also says, "He unsparingly rebuked Mrs. Eddy and her followers who teach that 'heaven is a divine state of mind.' "

Now the full sentence from "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy reads (p. 291), "Heaven is not a locality, but a divine state of Mind in which all the manifestations of Mind are harmonious and immortal, because sin is not there and man is found having no righteousness of his own, but in possession of 'the mind of the Lord,' as the Scripture says." It is to be noted that Mrs. Eddy capitalizes the word mind when referring to divine Mind; for she makes a very sharp distinctin between the human, mortal mind and divine Mind or "the mind of the Lord." Paul says, "The carnal mind is enmity against God." This carnal or mortal mind bases all its thinking on the evidence of the five physical senses, which cannot tell us the truth about God or His creation, and this mind certainly knows nothing about heaven here or hereafter; hence the absurdity to the uninformed reader of the statement that "heaven is a divine state of mind."

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