Article March 26, 1927 Issue

May I again ask the privilege of correcting, for the informating...

Thomas C. Hollingshead, Committee on Publication for the State of Idaho,—Boise

Capital News

May I again ask the privilege of correcting, for the informating of your readers, a misstatement by a well-known writer as to the teachings of Christian Science, which appeared in a recent issue of your paper. Christian Science does not allege that mind has power over matter, as that writer states. It teaches reliance on God; and its healing is founded on an absolute faith in God on the part of the practitioner, a faith that is based on spiritual understanding. It does not employ the power of the so-called human mind over matter, but it employs the power of the divine Mind over the so-called human mind and its errorneous conditions. As the term "divine Mind" is used in Christian Science it means God; and surely there is no question as to the power of God to heal any of the conditions the writer mentions, or any other unhappy condition. Beginning in the very Preface of her principle work, the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," and continuing throughout all her writings, Mrs. Eddy makes very clear that the human mind does not enter into the practice of metaphysical healing and she explains on page xi of the Preface of Science and Health that healing in Christian Science "results now, as in Jesus' time, from the operation of divine Principle, before which sin and disease lose their reality in human consciousness and disappear as naturally and as necessarily as darkness gives place to light and sin to reformation."

The writer states that "drug victims, in the last stages of affliction, are livened by hypodermic injections of distilled water, which they believe to contain morphine." Christian Science teaches that "faith in the drug is the sole factor in the cure" (Science and Health, p. 370); that is, that no drug has any power except as human belief gives it credit for such power. Education has resulted in faith in drugs being prevalent rather than faith in God, and health and harmony have been temporarily lost as a result; but many thousands are proving that just as much to-day as at any former period, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble," and are relying on Him rather than on material drugs. They have so often proved to their own satisfaction the superiority of spiritual over material methods in the healing of discordant conditions, that faith in drugs has been put aside and faith in the God "who healeth all thy diseases"—not merely some few minor ones—has been justified. The Jews of old asked, "Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?" Would the writer limit the power of God to the healing of what are known as less serious ailments and turn those believed to be more serious over to the skill of men? The Christian Scientist is learning to rely wholly upon the power of God to heal; and since God is all-powerful, it follows that there is no disease that cannot be healed through the correct application of the method taught in Christian Science. This conclusion is not merely a logical one, but is substantianted by numerous well-authenticated cases of permanent cure of the very conditions which our critic would have his readers believe should by preference be left to the care of the physician.

It is fortunate that your readers do not have to rely on the statement of any writer as to what Christian Science teaches, as in practically all public libraries there may be found the Christian Science textbook; and anyone who is interested in securing first-hand information on the subject can readily do so by studying this book.

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