Article September 27, 1924 Issue

Christian Science, as its name indicates, is the Science of...

Robert G. Steel,—Big Rapids

Pioneer

Christian Science, as its name indicates, is the Science of Christianity. Christian Scientists rightly claim to be Christians, because they follow the teachings of Christ Jesus. In obedience to Christ Jesus' commands, they are preaching the gospel, healing the sick, and regenerating the sinner by the method of the Master. In thus demonstrating the truth of their teachings they prove them scientific, since Science, to be Science, must be demonstrably true. Because of the quite general, though erroneous, use of the name "Jesus" and the title "Christ" as synonymous and interchangeable, the critic's statement that Christian Science "denies the person of Christ as God" is ambiguous. Christian Science makes the same distinction between Jesus and the Christ as did the Master himself. In that wonderfully illuminating declaration to the Jews, given in John's gospel, "Before Abraham was, I am," Jesus denied that Christ is person, if by person is meant a material man, since it is apparent that he could not have referred to his human selfhood as antedating Abraham. He thus not only taught that the Christ, the divine idea of God, is coexistent and coeternal with Deity, but made clear the distinction between the divine idea of God and his material selfhood, the human Jesus. On page 334 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, with her usual clearness of vision, writes as follows: "The invisible Christ was imperceptible to the so-called personal senses, whereas Jesus appeared as a bodily existence. This dual personality of the unseen and the seen, the spiritual and material, the eternal Christ and the corporeal Jesus manifest in flesh, continued until the Master's ascension, when the human, material concept, or Jesus, disappeared, while the spiritual self, or Christ, continues to exist in the eternal order of divine Science, taking away the sins of the world, as the Christ has always done, even before the human Jesus was incarnate to mortal eyes."

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