Article October 9, 1926 Issue

My attention has been called to an adverse comment on...

Judge Clifford P. Smith, Committee on Publication for The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, Massachusetts,—North Adams

Transcript

My attention has been called to an adverse comment on Christian Science by an "evangelistic" speaker in your recent issue. Seeing that he also spoke against "half of the Sunday school teachers" in a disrespectful way, I do not suppose that we Christian Scientists need to be concerned as to what he said about us or our religion. Nevertheless, I am always in favor of protesting against public misrepresentations, and, therefore, ask you to print this letter.

The assertion that Christian Science is "a doctrine of evils" is the very reverse of the actual fact. From first to last, this religion emphasizes good. Indeed, Christian Science mentions evil at all only to distinguish it from good and to equip people to help themselves and others to get free from it. In all of Mrs. Eddy's writings, one of the main points is "the supremacy and reality of good, the nothingness and unreality of evil" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 205).

The censorious speaker also stumbled when he attempted to find a fault in Mrs. Eddy's teaching that evil, in all of its different forms, is unreal. The time has gone by when anybody needs to be ignorant, or assume that other people are ignorant, of the distinction in absolute Being between what is real and what is unreal. This distinction, first elucidated by Mrs. Eddy, is now in practical use by many of the most intelligent and thoughtful people of the present time. For instance, President Coolidge employed this sense of reality in his address of February 23, 1926, as follows: "Envy, malice, uncharitableness, class jealousies, race prejudices, and international enmities are not realities. They do not abide. They are only the fictions of unenlightened comprehension."

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

My attention has been called to an adverse comment on...

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access