Article March 27, 1926 Issue

I have at hand a copy of your valued paper containing a...

August Fritsche, Committee on Publication for the State of Minnesota,—Fosston

Thirteen Towns

I have at hand a copy of your valued paper containing a short report of a so-called lecture on Christian Science by a clergyman from Park Rapids, Minnesota. May I point out that the lecture could have been only the clergyman's limited expression of his views about Christian Science, and that lectures on Christian Science can properly be given only by those who, through consecrated study and practice, have attained that degree of understanding which is required of its lecturers by The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston, Massachusetts. It was to protect the public from ignorant and misleading statements, as well as to place the subject correctly before those desiring to hear lectures on Christian Science, that the authorized Christian Science Board of Lectureship was instituted. It would be unthinkable that any one wishing authoritative information on such subjects as mathematics, chemistry, or physics should turn to sources ignorant of these subjects and many times prejudiced against them; yet clergymen who speak against Christian Science often fail entirely to understand Christian Science as "the law of God, the law of good, interpreting and demonstrating the divine Principle and rule of universal harmony" (Rudimental Divine Science, p. 1).

The Apostle John tells us that "God is love;" and on page 4 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy we read, "We reach the Science of Christianity through demonstration of the divine nature." It could hardly be said that the clergyman demonstrated—showed forth or proved—any true knowledge of Love when he spoke of the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science as he did. He could only have spoken as he did to prejudice those of his audience who had not read in the "Life of Mary Baker Eddy" by Sibyl Wilbure the account of her years of struggle and invalidism, her years of prayerful study of the Scriptures, and her final discovery of "the law of God, the law of good," which she named Christian Science. Mrs. Eddy was a loving, spiritually-minded woman. "The story of her life forms one of the most remarkable records among the histories of the religious leaders of the ages" (Twentieth Century Magazine).

The clergyman, as reported, concluded his lecture "by comparing the religion (presumably Christian Science) as it is, with the religion of Jesus Christ and the apostles as recorded in the New Testament." It is to be hoped that the comparison included a recognition of the fact that Christian Science follows the Master's injunction, "Heal the sick;" that it recognizes the unqualified demand, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also;" that it enables its adherents to "know the truth" so that the truth (not hypnotism or suggestion) shall make them free; and that it inculcates the practice of the Golden Rule among Christians, thus placing the brotherhood of man above all differences of creed or doctrine.

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