Article September 27, 1919 Issue

Very discerningly, indeed, does a gentleman write of...

Peter V. Ross—San Francisco, Calif.

Emanu-El

Very discerningly, indeed, does a gentleman write of Christian Science in Emanu-El. He is quite right when he says that we cannot banish sin and pain from the world by ignoring them, nor abolish evil by denying its existence. He might have added, with equal truth, that we cannot overcome them while admitting their reality.

We must, so Christian Science insists, go farther than simply to ignore or even deny evil, whether it takes the form of sin or of suffering. It is essential, if we would destroy it, to see evil for what it is; namely, the suppositional absence of good, a false pretension of power, dangerous until faced and overthrown, and susceptible of being overthrown only because, notwithstanding appearances, it is after all without entity or actuality. The denial of evil is important, but likely to be wanting in complete efficacy unless accompanied by the affirmative realization that the omnipresence and omnipotence of God, or the all-presence and the all-power of good, relegates evil to the realm of illusion or unreality, without power or influence except as it is believed or accepted. Ignoring evil is wholly inadmissible, for thereby it is given opportunity to propagate and spread its deception. It must be seen in its true light or nature as a false claim, and then met and uprooted. This becomes possible only as its unreality is recognized, since real things are permanent and enduring.

Our critic errs in supposing that Christian Scientists "would effect cures by the mere recital of Biblical verses." The fact is that Christian Science has imparted a new meaning and vitality to the Scriptures which enables Christian Scientists to utilize the Bible truths and thereby to overcome sickness by spiritual means as promised and illustrated in Holy Writ. This it does, not by reciting verses and formulas, but by a process of spiritual understanding which discerns disease as a mistaken belief or phenomenon of the human mind and displaces it with the idea that health and harmony are everywhere present, even where suffering seems to be. Material sense, with its fears and pains, is thus made to yield to spiritual consciousness, which is cognizant only of the things of God.

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