Article April 4, 1925 Issue

Clergymen have much to gain and nothing to lose by...

Arthur P. DeCamp, Committee on Publication for the State of Missouri—Montgomery City

Standard

Clergymen have much to gain and nothing to lose by doing justice to Christian Science and to its renowned Discoverer and Founder, Mary Baker Eddy. All will agree that justice is a divine attribute and that it blesses those who follow its dictates. If preachers of the gospel of Christ Jesus undertake to inform their hearers concerning this world-wide movement and its Leader, Mrs. Eddy, it were wise to approach the subject in the freedom of Christly affection, and to remember that prejudice and sectarianism blind the judgment and cloud the discernment even of those who generally incline toward fairness and high-mindedness. One who is blinded by prejudice is all too likely to accept as facts the most outrageous falsities and misrepresentations, whereas kind and unbiased consideration leads one to seek and to find authentic sources of information.

Mrs. Eddy's life is an open book, and those who read it in the light of truth see it to be a life of devotion to God and to humanity,—a life of purity, of high resolve, and of unceasing self-sacrifice. It would be utterly impossible for a character and life of less exalted motive and purity of purpose to bring to humanity such fruits of reformation and healing as those that in an ever widening stream testify to the wholly Christian basis of Mrs. Eddy's teaching. Her life epitomized her teaching. Any one who really desires to know the truth about Christian Science and its Leader, and who seeks that truth in Christly meekness, will learn that Christian Science is founded on the Bible and that the Bible was Mrs. Eddy's authority for all her teachings. She writes on page 110 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "In following these leadings of scientific revelation, the Bible was my only textbook. ... No human pen nor tongue taught me the Science contained in this book, Science and Health; and neither tongue nor pen can overthrow it."

A minister of a Christian denomination residing in Missouri recently preached a sermon on the subject, "What I like about Christian Science." taking his text from the eighth chapter of Romans, the sixth verse: "To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." In the course of his sermon he said: "I like the fact that it accepts the Holy Bible and that it does not look beyond the Bible for a rule and guide for Christian living; it exalts the Scriptures; its members read the Bible. There is a spiritual motive about Christian Science which I seldom find elsewhere. I crave sometimes for myself more of that spirituality." Such an instance of unbiased judgment and wholehearted appreciation of the morale of Christian Science is refreshing. Every little while a new voice is lifted up in the Christian ministry to declare that Christian Science is really Christian. That some preachers are not so well informed nor so discerning is a fair conclusion from their pulpit utterances. It is evident that they have accepted as of historic value publications, many times discredited, which disclose a malicious animus, and which in no way truthfully present the genesis of Christian Science or its operations in the past or to-day. The statements concerning Mrs. Eddy's life and work contained in the class of publications alluded to are utterly false and misleading.

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