Article July 15, 1922 Issue

While it is a matter of common knowledge that the remarkable...

J. N. Van Patten, Committee on Publication for the State of California,

San Diego Jewish Community News

While it is a matter of common knowledge that the remarkable growth of Christian Science has been largely dependent upon the destruction in the lives of its adherents of evil, both sin and sickness, it is decidedly conjectural what is to be understood from the statement attributed to a rabbi in a recent issue of your paper that "Christian Science ignores evil and imagines the good." If he is referring to the method by which Christian Science heals the sick, perhaps the refutation of this which will carry the most conviction to your people would be the correct conclusion of a distinguished representative of their own faith. In the Messenger of November 25, 1921, Rabbi Morris Lichtenstein of Athens, Georgia, admits that it is the conception of healing by prayer to God,—"Even the conception of healing through the invocation of God is entirely congruous with the doctrines of Judaism."

Again the rabbi's mistaken view that a "Christian Scientist is an optimist who keeps his eyes closed" should not encourage any one to accept Science with the idea that either this or any other ignoring process will be his easy lot. True, many of the Jewish faith have been healed through reading "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, or have received healing through help of practitioners, with apparently no personal effort other than a prayerful desire to be healed by God. But in working out their further salvation they found the necessity for constant activity against the claims of evil, and not only for their own happiness and welfare, but to consummate the fulfillment of the real mission of Christian Science, which the following excerpt will indicate is the antipode of either ignoring or being blind to evil (Science and Health, p. 150): "Now, as then, signs and wonders are wrought in the metaphysical healing of physical disease; but these signs are only to demonstrate its divine origin,—to attest the reality of the higher mission of the Christ-power to take away the sins of the world."

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