Article August 1, 1925 Issue

Will you kindly allow me space in this week's issue of...

Miss V. M. Blanche Stievenard, Committee on Publication for Hertfordshire, England,—St. Albans

Herts Advertiser

Will you kindly allow me space in this week's issue of your paper for a short answer to a clergyman's criticism on Christian Science? He says that he has studied the subject; but it is not possible to study a science without putting it to the test to prove its value. Thousands of people are doing this and finding Christian Science to be the truth which Jesus of Nazareth said "shall make you free." The critic's objection is that "the Christ in Christian Science is not the Christ of the gospels,—is not Jesus of Nazareth, is not a person at all." But does not the New Testament teach that the Christ is without beginning of days and end of years? Was not Jesus identifying himself with the Christ when he said, "Before Abraham was, I am"? And does not Paul speak of Christ as the spiritual Rock—Truth? The advent of the Christ, therefore, does not date at the birth of Jesus. The Christ is eternal and ever present. Jesus of Nazareth so identified himself with Christ that he revealed the full redemptive power of the Christ for all men and for all time, and so became the Saviour of the world. It is this revelation of the Christ in Christian Science which heals the sick and the sinning, and it can readily be seen that it coincides with Truth as revealed throughout the Bible.

Those who understand Christian Science know that it has nothing in common with the intellectual knowledge and mystic revelations of Gnosticism, with sought to explain the interaction of Spirit and matter and to amalgamate itself with any form of organized religion, from time long precedent to the Christian era. Christian Science, on the contrary, teaches the allness of Spirit and the consequent nothingness of matter, Spirit's opposite. Our critic asserts that all science "is based ... on observation ... which depends on the evidence of the senses," and objects because Christian Science denies that evidence. But can the evidence of the senses reveal to us the fact of the central stillness of the sun and the perpetual motion of the earth, for the discovery of which Galileo was persecuted? To accept the evidence of the senses would be to reason from effect to cause, whereas a priori reasoning, from cause to effect, has, throughout the world's history, enabled men to discover scientific truth. Scientific Christianity reasons on this basis, and maintains that, as God is the sole creator of man and the universe, creation must reflect Him, and all that is unlike Him must be wiped out as a thick cloud.

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