Could our ministerial critic have had even the faintest concept...

Marshall Evening Chronicle

Could our ministerial critic have had even the faintest concept of the spirituality and beauty of holiness which an understanding of the Christian Science teaching as to the incorporeality of God inculcates in the open-minded, willing-to-learn individual, his letter of criticism appearing in a recent issue of your paper would not have been penned. Moreover, what he erroneously terms the "crudities and irrationalities" of the published report of the Christian Science lecturer's address would have appeared to his own consciousness, as they undoubtedly did to that of hundreds of other intelligent men and women, as parts of a finished literary product, in strict harmony with the Bible and wholly consistent with the precepts of Christ Jesus. In his challenge of the accuracy of one of the lecturer's statements he quotes only a part of what was said, the quoted portion being as follows: "Theology is beginning to teach the incorporeality of God." This omits a qualifying clause which reads, "but not one who is the Spirit that is all-Love, too pure to behold iniquity, evil of any kind, to cause it or permit it." Teaching should be judged, at least in a measure, by the impressions and the understanding gained by those taught. According to this just standard, the critic's claim that theology has always taught the incorporeality of God may be open to serious question.

The writer was for years a pupil in, and an officer of, the Sunday school of a so-called orthodox church. He was taught that Adam was created by God, and that this Adam was the first man; that all the inhabitants of the earth are descended from this Adam. Ignoring the differences between the two entiresly dissimilar accounts of creation as recorded respectively in the first and second chapters of Genesis, or rather mixing the two accounts in a rather inextricable manner, he was also taught that this Adam-man was the image and likeness of God, although the Bible does not so state. The very natural inference gained from all this was that God was a great big man, sitting on a material throne, located in some definite place, beyond the clouds, called heaven. It was taught that this heaven was entered through pearly gates, that its streets were of gold, and that it contained everything beautiful. Entrance to it could be gained only by passing through what is called death, and then only if one's earthly life conformed to certain standards of goodness or sinlessness, which standards, however, seemed to vary with the different religious denominations. God was said to punish us for wrongdoing or for some infraction of His law, this punishment even extending to the point where He brought sickness and other discord upon us. Surely such a materially constituted and materially inclined God could not be incorporeal. In later years, to satisfy himself as to whether there had been any change in the method of teaching which had brought about what he now believes to be an erroneous concept of God and of heaven, the writer questioned children who were being taught in the so-called Sunday schools. He finds that, even to-day, whenever the child is able to express any concrete idea of God at all, that idea or concept in the child-consciousness is of a manlike God.

Recently in a sermon delivered from the pulpit of a large church not a thousand miles from Detroit, the minister in criticizing the Christian Science teaching relative to God made the statement that to him "God is a man, with arms and hands and legs and feet." What becomes of incorporeality in a God so constituted? That God is Spirit is, of course, not a new discovery. It is an eternal truth. It always has been true and always will be true. It is stated many times in the Bible. It remained, however, for Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, to again present to the world in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," the understanding of God as Spirit, and the relationship of the real man to his Maker as God's spiritual image and likeness, through which the sick are healed and the sinning regenerated to-day in precisely the same manner these works were performed by Christ Jesus in the first century, and by his followers for nearly three centuries following the ascension.

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