Article June 23, 1923 Issue

As reported in a recent issue of your paper, a physician...

Judge Clifford P. Smith, Committee on Publication for The Mother Church

Republican, Springfield, Mass.

As reported in a recent issue of your paper, a physician spoke somewhat favorably of Christian Science, but said, "How anybody can profess to cure something they claim does not exist is more than I can understand." In this way, doubtless, he alluded to the teaching of Christian Science, which distinguishes what is seeming or apparent from what is absolutely real. Therefore, kindly allow me to submit an explanation by means of the dictionary and an illustration.

Two of the meanings of he word "real," in Webster's New International dictionary (published at Springfield) are as follows: "Actual, as distinguished from fictitious or imaginary; also, existing intrinsically or inherently, as distinguished from seeming or apparent." It is in this latter sense that Christian Science declares the unreality of all that seems to exist as part of human experience but is not derived from God. Recognizing the divine Being as the only cause or creator, Christian Science declares that, to quote words used by Mrs. Eddy, "reality is spiritual, harmonious, immutable, immortal, divine, eternal. Nothing unspiritual can be real, harmonious, or eternal. Sin, sickness, and mortality are the suppositional antipodes of Spirit, and must be contradictions of reality" (Science and Health, p. 335).

The illustration which I would submit can be stated by asking whether one's disbelief in ghosts, or his understanding of reality, would not help him to cure another who believes in ghosts. Accordingly, one's spiritual understanding of reality and his understanding of divine law can enable him to deliver another from other erroneous conditions which seem real. Of course, it is results which furnish the best proof of such propositions.

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