Article February 5, 1927 Issue

Some time ago a news item from London, England, appeared...

Ralph B. Textor, Committee on Publication for the State of Ohio,

Cleveland News

Some time ago a news item from London, England, appeared in your newspaper which stated that "an organization to 'interpret' the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy has been formed. . . . The primary aims of the organization are the abolition of all compulsory legislation and the modification or repeal of the United States prohibition laws, 'which are against the direct teachings of Mrs. Eddy.'" It is not true that the United States prohibition laws are against the teachings of Mrs. Eddy. Her own words fully bear out the truth of this statement. On page 454 of the Christian Science text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," she has written, "It need not be added that the use of tobacco or intoxicating drinks is not in harmony with Christian Science." In her book, "Miscellaneous Writings" (pp. 288, 289), we read: "The cause of temperance receives a strong impulse from the cause of Christian Science. . . . Whatever intoxicates a man, stultifies and causes him to degenerate physically and morally. Strong drink is unquestionably an evil, and evil cannot be used temperately: its slightest use is abuse; hence the only temperance is total abstinence."

Mrs. Eddy's stand on the liquor question was most definite and positive. In accordance therewith, several months ago the Board of Directors of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, published resolutions pledging their support to the cause of national prohibition in the United States and to the Eighteenth Amendment to our Constitution. Christian Scientists are not divided, but stand, individually and collectively, in hearty support of national prohibition. The assumption that the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, need any organization to interpret them is not in accord with the statement in the Foreword of her book, "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. vi), which reads: "(1) That Science and Health does not need to be interpreted to those who are earnestly seeking Truth; (2) that it is not possible to state truth absolutely in a simpler or more pleasing form.

"3. That no one on earth to-day, aside from Mrs. Eddy, knows anything about Christian Science except as he has learned it from her and from her writings; and Christian Scientists are honest only as they give her full credit for this extraordinary work.

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