Article December 26, 1925 Issue

A clergyman, writing in a recent issue, refers to Christian Science...

Charles W. J. Tennant,—Dunfermline

Holiness Herald

A clergyman, writing in a recent issue, refers to Christian Science in such a way as to exhibit a total ignorance of its teaching and practice with regard to sin. Christian Science does not "approve sin," as our critic infers, but denounces it, proving its unreality by uncovering it and destroying it through the method of Christ Jesus. Christian Science teaches that sin has no more necessity than mistakes have in mathematics. To believe in anything apart from God and His infinite manifestation is sin in its widest sense. Sin, therefore, can be destroyed only by a knowledge of God, in the same way that mistakes in mathematics are obliterated by a knowledge of the fundamentals of mathematics. We are told in the epistle of John, "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God." This, of course, refers to the spiritual man made in the image and likeness of God—the real man. On the other hand, the mortal, material man, is the expression of sin; and John, speaking of this man, says, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." On page 497 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, it is written, "We acknowledge God's forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal. But the belief in sin is punished so long as the belief lasts."