Article October 7, 1922 Issue

My attention has been drawn to an article in a recent...

Hubert W. Carr, Committee on Publication for India,

Madras Mail

My attention has been drawn to an article in a recent issue of your paper which gives an entirely erroneous impression as to the attitude of Christian Scientists towards sin. If sin is something, if it is a truth, if it exists, it is obvious that it must be known to God and be contained in the divine Mind. Consequently, it would have to be assumed that every loathsome form of evil and animality which the carnal mind can conceive must exist in the divine Mind, God; and, logically, the man who wishes to be Godlike would not awaken in His likeness until he knew all evil, as well as all good! Can any adherent of the doctrine of the reality of sin complain, then, if one in his effort to be Godlike sets forth to learn the evil first? Some such impossible position we get into, when we advance theories as to the reality of sin.

Christian Science denies all reality to sin, because sin is the very antithesis of all that is like God, and "without him was not any thing made that was made." Christian Science teaches that the belief in sin arises from a misconception of God and the nature of His creation, and that Jesus the Christ, who came to "destroy the works of the devil" and to do "the will of the Father," proved the unreality of evil in all its forms,—sin, sickness, and death,—by demonstrating the actuality and ever-presence of good: it teaches that sin brings suffering; for whoever believes in sin believes in a power opposed to God, thus breaking the commandments: it teaches the paramount necessity for man to overcome the belief of sin in himself and in others, in order to escape sin's effects. In short, Christian Scientists adopt the attitude shown in Mrs. Eddy's words in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 497), where she writes: "We acknowledge God's forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal. But the belief in sin is punished so long as the belief lasts."

In this view of sin the student of Christian Science is emboldened to attack it in its various forms without any doubt as to the finality, and in the assurance that sin has no divine authority and has no more power opposed to good than darkness has when opposed to light. This doctrine means, therefore, that, far from thinking lightly of God, men can only get the true conception of sin as they understand the allness of God.

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