Article January 24, 1925 Issue

"In your paper of recent date is an article written..."

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

Times

In your paper of recent date is an article written by a clergyman, in which he refers to Christian Science, rather vaguely perhaps, as a form of self-intoxication, and designates it as “the cult of the New England high priestess of a self-contradictory mysticism.” Now as Christian Science is neither self-contradictory nor mystic in its teaching, I shall appreciate space for brief comment upon such characterizations. Because Christian Science, to millions of people who have taken the trouble to gain some understanding of it, has given them the greatest and most enduring uplift they ever experienced, it must be said that would-be opponents of Christian Science do not meet the issues it presents, and in most cases do not fairly try to do so. They either evade them, and resort to gibes and jeers because they cannot refute its sound arguments based on spiritual premises and conclusions, or they use quotations torn from their contexts, giving them a meaning different from their true intent, or compare such quotations with passages of Scripture to which they have no application, or declare them unscriptural because they may not agree with some particular creed or dogma that never had divine Truth as a basis.

Christian Science can be judged fairly only from the standpoint of its own basis,—and that is the Word of God,—as divine Science, and by the fruits of its practice in human experience. Have any of your readers ever found opponents of Christian Science, in either the pulpit or the press, attempting fairly to meet and follow Mrs. Eddy’s logic in drawing her conclusions from the great fact, as a premise, that God, who is Spirit according to Christ Jesus, and Love according to John, is the only cause and creator? The present writer has not. But if such have a desire to do so, and will allow themselves sufficiently to be guided by her pure logic, they will naturally and easily admit its correctness. The logic being admitted, under the guidance of Mrs. Eddy’s writings, particularly her textbook, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” the Bible becomes to the student a new book, free from numerous doubts, dogmas, and contradictions that previously had completely puzzled him.

To deny the fundamental basis of Christian Science and its teaching is to hold God responsible for all evil, to make of the Bible a jumble of contradictions, to repudiate the only consistent standard of divine truth and law, and to leave the world in a mental and spiritual chaos, where it has been floundering for centuries. Christian Science is not mystical, as alleged. In the words of Mrs. Eddy (Science and Health, p. 111): “Christian Science is natural, but not physical. The Science of God and man is no more supernatural than is the science of numbers, though departing from the realm of the physical, as the Science of God, Spirit, must, some may deny its right to the name of Science. The Principle of divine metaphysics is God; the practice of divine metaphysics is the utilization of the power of Truth over error; its rules demonstrate its Science.”

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