Article February 16, 1924 Issue

The Cause of Christian Science has thrived under the...

W. Stuart Booth, Committee on Publication for Colorado,—La Veta

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The Cause of Christian Science has thrived under the lash of persecution and misrepresentation, because attacks upon Christian Science have invariably caused unbiased seekers to investigate the subject, only to find it to be satisfying to their reason as well as to their religious sense, especially as they have been able to verify its claims by healing sickness and overcoming sin in accordance with Jesus' promises. Any church has a right to impose any test its ingenuity may devise as a prerequisite for membership, but no church has a right to identify Christianity with creed or ritual. According to the Master, Christianity does not consist in merely believing certain things about God and Jesus, but rather in living and working in obedience to God's law and in conformity to the precept and practice of the great Way-shower, Christ Jesus.

Christian Scientists find it more appealing, reasonable, and satisfying to accept Jesus' statement regarding disease, when he said of a certain woman whom he had healed that Satan had bound her. If Satan brings sickness in one instance and God does likewise in others, then God and Satan must be cooperating, and the chance of escaping from and overcoming evil would be nil. But the Bible states that God is good, is "of purer eyes than to behold evil," and is "the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." Christ Jesus evidently made this the basis of his thought and work, because he overcame every phase of evil, including sickness, and, as he said, he came to do the will of his Father; therefore it must now and ever be the will of God that sickness and sin be overcome by means of the applied understanding of spiritual power and law. Mrs. Eddy's denomination of evil as a falsity is substantiated by Jesus' definition of the devil as a liar and the father of lies, not of realities.

Writing on page 140 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy makes this logically appealing statement: "That God is a corporeal being, nobody can truly affirm. The Bible represents Him as saying: 'Thou canst not see My face; for there shall no man see Me, and live.' Not materially but spiritually we know Him as divine Mind, as Life, Truth, and Love. We shall obey and adore in proportion as we apprehend the divine nature and love Him understandingly, warring no more over the corporeality, but rejoicing in the affluence of our God. Religion will then be of the heart and not of the head. Mankind will no longer be tyrannical and proscriptive from lack of love,—straining out gnats and swallowing camels."

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