Article September 13, 1919 Issue

The difference between our clerical critic and the Christian Scientists...

Charles M. Shaw

Lancaster (England) Observer

The difference between our clerical critic and the Christian Scientists in their attitude toward pain and disease is a fundamental one. He accepts the dualistic conception of man and the universe; that is, he believes matter is as real as spirit, that evil is as real as good, and that the mind of the flesh is as real as the mind of the Spirit. To him, therefore, pain and disease are facts, and he condemns Christian Science because it "tended to ignore the facts of existence." On the other hand, the Christian Scientist believes that there is only one Mind, one Spirit, one power, one substance, God and His idea infinitely manifested. He holds, therefore, that evil is the supposed absence, in consciousness, of good; matter, the suppositional absence of Spirit; the mind of the flesh, the suppositional absence of Spirit; the mind of the Spirit." And he holds that evil is to be overcome of good, that evil being negative and good positive, the understanding and expression of the latter in every activity and relationship of life completely destroys the former in its physical as well as in its mental manifestations. There is thus a tremendous gulf between the two positions.

The Christian Scientist maintains that his position is based on a true interpretation of Scripture, which reveals the fact that the spiritual is the real and the only, and also that evil has no place in the divine creation. The two accounts of creation in the book of Genesis are contradictory. The first, contained in the first chapter, is the account of the spiritual creation, and "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." The second, contained in the second chapter, is the mortal conception of creation, based largely upon mortal experience. I cannot here adduce all the evidence from the Scriptures to support the judgment of Christian Science that the first is the true account, but I will content myself with one very significant statement from Hebrews: "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear."

In Doctor Cairns' able book, "The Reasonableness of the Christian Faith," he says: "The point from which all religion started was the conviction that above and behind the present world there was another and a mightier universe, a spiritual and unseen world, by union with which men could attain the life and freedom which in their fullness were denied them here." And he speaks of the common world and our life in it as the "earth-dream." He further says: "Is there not every probability that there is a condition of knowledge and of life possible for us all to-day, waiting for us in God and in the soul of man, as much above our present condition as ours is above the condition of prehistoric mankind?"

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