Article August 16, 1924 Issue

Under the heading, "What's Wrong with the World?"...

Aaron E. Brandt, Committee on Publication for the State of Pennsylvania,—Philadelphia

North American,

Under the heading, "What's Wrong with the World?" a letter appears in which the writer thereof says: "The world to-day has set up man's infallibility in opposition to the infallibility of Christ. Take Christian Science. It denies every fundamental doctrine of the Scriptures."

The writer evidently means well, but I deny most emphatically that any part of his statement is applicable to the teaching of Christian Science. In such teaching, permit me to say, Christ is the true and perfect man of God's creating, and nothing short of the Christ-nature, therefore, can be infallible. In differentiating between the sinless child of God, referred to in I John 3:9, and sinful humanity, Mrs. Eddy writes thus in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 409): "The real man is spiritual and immortal, but the mortal and imperfect so-called 'children of men' are counterfeits from the beginning, to be laid aside for the pure reality. This mortal is put off, and the new man or real man is put on, in proportion as mortals realize the Science of man and seek the true model." In thus making the same distinction as Paul made between the material concept of man, or Adam, in which all die, and the true concept of man, or the Christ, in whom all shall be made alive, Christian Science does not deny a fundamental doctrine of Scripture, but affirms it. And this is true of every part of Christian Science, which, when understood, is found acceptable to adherents of many other religions. The truth discerned therein produces this natural result, and it illustrates exactly what Jesus meant in his profound words to Pilate, "Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice." It may be said without much risk of contradiction that all the prominent religions of the world, so slightingly referred to by the critic, have ideals which, in their original form and purity, are higher and better than the practice of their adherents may indicate, and which, if followed, would bring about better conditions. Therefore, mistaken and ill-advised attacks upon them are not only quite useless, but may be harmful. The late President Harding, in an address delivered before a Bible class at Washington, said: "In the experience of a year in the presidency there has come to me no other such unwelcome impression as the manifest religious intolerance which exists among many of our citizens. I hold it to be a menace to the very liberties we boast and cherish."

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