Article July 18, 1925 Issue

A sermon appeared in your issue of recent date in which...

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

Tribune

A sermon appeared in your issue of recent date in which an evangelist from California tried to make it appear that every religious teaching which denies the personality of God is paganism. And since he erroneously included Christian Science in that category, and ignored Christ Jesus' measure of spiritual values,—"By their fruits ye shall know them,"—I shall appreciate space for a brief reply.

On page 116 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy plainly says: "As the words person and personal are commonly and ignorantly employed, they often lead, when applied to Deity, to confused and erroneous conceptions of divinity and its distinction from humanity. If the term personality, as applied to God, means infinite personality, then God is infinite Person—in the sense of infinite personality, but not in the lower sense." In consistently maintaining the great and important distinction between the infinite incorporeal personality of God as ever present Life, Truth, and Love, or as divine Mind, and a finite, human, and corporeal personality, Mrs. Eddy says (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 16) that "God is infinitely more than a person, or finite form, can contain." And on page 13 of "The People's Idea of God," referring again to this lower and finite sense of person, she states: "But the worshippers of a person have a lower order of Christianity than he who understands that the Divine Being is more than a person, and can demonstrate in part this great impersonal Life, Truth, and Love, casting out error and healing the sick. This all-important understanding is gained in Christian Science, revealing the one God and His all-power and ever-presence, and the brotherhood of man in unity of Mind and oneness of Principle." Beyond question, therefore, God was more to Mrs. Eddy than to the worshipers of a limited, corporeal person; and it was precisely this greater, higher, and truer concept of God that enabled Mrs. Eddy to heal the sick, in accordance with Jesus' demands, and to restore to the world primitive Christian healing. Undoubtedly the error of the ages has consisted in limiting God; and Mrs. Eddy's interpretation of the Scriptures is gradually and surely removing these limitations. The fact that her teaching "more or less pervades the whole spiritual atmosphere of America," as admitted by the clerical critic, is ground only for rejoicing.

In conclusion, I wish to say kindly, but emphatically, that the reverend gentleman is mistaken, and shows his unfamiliarity with Christian Science teaching in assuming that the universe and God are identical in such teaching, and that the latter is therefore pantheistic and pagan. Christian Science teaches no such thing. The universe of one infinite divine Mind or God must necessarily consist of spiritual ideas, which image forth the all-pervading divine intelligence, without an element of matter or evil. That is the reverse of pantheism. And it precludes the possibility of evil existing as a reality, in consonance with the Scripture, "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good."

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