Article August 21, 1926 Issue

With reference to the article on Christian Science in...

William C. Brookes, Committee on Publication for Midlothian, Scotland,—Edinburgh

Protestant Advocate

With reference to the article on Christian Science in your recent issue, will you, with your usual courtesy, permit me to say that no one can be misled as to the purpose of Christian Science because its only purpose is to teach people to obey the laws of God as propounded by Christ Jesus. That being so, Christian Science needs no "mask" and the only hindrance to obtaining some grasp of its teachings is want of capacity to discern spiritual things. Your contributor says Mrs. Eddy describes God as "a divine principle." This is a mistake. Mrs. Eddy defines God as "the divine Principle" —a distinction with a difference! In other words Christian Scientists use the term "Principle" as a synonym for "God." The Holy Bible teaches the personality of God, says our critic. Certainly it does; and it also teaches that God is infinite. Therefore it teaches that He is infinite personality, which is wholly is harmony with what Mrs. Eddy says on page 116 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "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. An infinite Mind in a finite form is an absolute impossibility."

The subject of the atonement is next touched upon by our critic, and he speaks of Christ's "all-atoning sacrifice." This is not the language of the gospels but of the creeds. Jesus' thought of atonement (at-one-ment) was expressed in the inexorable command, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." That is to say, get rid of your sins, your imperfections, by giving them up, and do not imagine you can get rid of them in any other way. Mrs. Eddy was grateful for all that the Protestant Evangelical Church had done for her in her early years, just as all Christian Scientists are grateful to the churches in which they were brought up. And, like Thomas Carlyle, Christian Scientists recognize that the world would be a much poorer place to live in than it is were it not for the self-sacrificing labors of great numbers of Christian pastors. Nevertheless, when one has learned the way to prove what one has been taught of God, as Jesus required his disciples to prove what they had been taught, one is impelled to leave the old paths for the new. Our critic says there are two great facts—sin and suffering. That is exactly what the human mind was saying in the first century. And Jesus' reply was, "Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?"

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