Article January 17, 1920 Issue

Without doubt the gratuitous correspondent who answers...

W. Stuart Booth

Glenwood Springs (Colo.) Post

Without doubt the gratuitous correspondent who answers his misconception of a Christian Science lecture, is sincere in his belief. As much could be said, however, of those who persecuted Galileo, on so-called religious grounds, because he enunciated a theory regarding the solar system which differed radically from the generally accepted, though unproved, belief in regard thereto. Those who opposed Galileo and his theory were working solely from the basis of material sense testimony, which told them of the earth as the center of the universe and immovable. Similarly, those who oppose Christian Science because it teaches that sin and sickness are no part of God's creation, and hence must be unreal, are also basing their deductions upon material sense or carnal mind testimony. Christ Jesus, knowing that "all things were made by him [God, Spirit]; and without him was not any thing made that was made," realized that sin, sickness, discord, death, were negative and unreal, because they were without divine authority, sanction, and support. This spiritual knowledge enabled him to overcome these evil conditions and thus prove their unreality. If it were divinely natural for man to sin and be sick, Jesus would not have said in his Sermon on the Mount, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." For any man to argue for the reality of sin and sickness is like a defendant in court pleading against himself, and it is certainly a very poor way to ascertain that "the kingdom of God is within you," as Jesus stated it to be.

The faith of Christian Scientists is that referred to by James when he said, "What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he have faith, and have not works?" And then he clinched his argument with, "Shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works." Christian Scientists follow this example of James and point to the works of healing of sickness and the destruction of sin, which Jesus promised should be the "signs following" with those who believe on him. Thus, as Mrs. Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 355), "the charge of inconsistency in Christianly scientific methods of dealing with sin and disease is met by something practical,—namely, the proof of the utility of these methods; and proofs are better than mere verbal arguments or prayers which evince no spiritual power to heal."

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