Article August 26, 1922 Issue

Your report of the address on "Spiritual Healing" in the...

Stanley M. Sydenham, Committee on Publication for the County of York,

Yorkshire Observer

Your report of the address on "Spiritual Healing" in the Bradford Cathedral includes some references to Christian Science which are misleading. It is gratifying to note the admission that Christian Science teaches that nothing is real except the things of Spirit. The admission is an important one, as it is a recognition that this teaching is in accordance with that of Christ Jesus. The apostle James discourses on faith. Of one kind he says, "Faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone." True faith, he tells us, is shown by works. The faith of Christian Scientists is made manifest in the destruction of sin and in the healing of sickness. The beloved Master promised, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also."

In accordance with the Bible, Christian Science teaches that God is Spirit, the only cause and creator, and that creation is spiritual. Because creation, as God knows it, is spiritual, the material sense of the "whole world" must be an illusion. The material world, so-called, is the material sense of it, and is not the spiritual idea. The apostle Paul wrote, "For now we see through a glass, darkly." He was setting forth the fact that the carnally-minded see nothing as it really is in God's sight, for their vision is obscured by material sense. He also wrote, "The carnal mind is enmity against God." The things cognized by the carnal senses are counterfeits of the divine ideas. Nothing is real that is unlike the divine nature and character, for God's manifestations of Himself are pure, perfect, and enduring. Paul clearly saw through the deception of material sense; and recognized that the world was in bondage to false belief, when he declared, "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." At the same time he made it quite clear that there is a way out. He revealed the fact that each individual frees himself and his universe from the thralldom of material sense just to the extent that he is willing to put off the old man, the carnal mind, and to put on the new man, the Mind of Christ. The world, the material sense of the world, passeth away. So-called material science deals with that which passeth away. That which passeth away is not and cannot be actually that which God had made; for we are told in the Scriptures, "Whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it."

Christ Jesus stated that life eternal is the knowledge of God and of His Christ. This knowledge is Christian knowledge, or Christian Science. Mrs. Eddy writes of "Divine Science" in her book "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 336): "What is it but another name for Christian Science, the cognomen of all true religion, the quintessence of Christianity, that heals disease and sin and destroys death! Part and parcel of Truth and Love, wherever one ray of its effulgence looks in upon the heart, behold a better man, woman, or child."

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