Article June 25, 1927 Issue

I am sorry to have to ask for more space in your valuable...

Miss Esther Murray, Committee on Publication for Natal, Union of South Africa,—Durban

South African Woman's Weekly

I am sorry to have to ask for more space in your valuable paper for what may appear to be a religious controversy, but I cannot allow the statements regarding Mary Baker Eddy made by your last correspondent to pass without correction. If your correspondent had confined her remarks to psychology and theosophy, no reply would have been necessary; each person is free to study and choose what he or she believes to be good and true. But the statements that Mrs. Eddy admitted, twenty-six years ago, that she was, or had been, a spiritualistic medium, that the later teachings of Christian Science embrace theosophy, and that Mrs. Eddy learned or taught her students to diagnose disease, are all incorrect. Diagnosis of disease is no part of Christian Science practice, which is entirely healing by prayer and by the understanding that the power of God is present to heal all manner of sickness and sin, whatever these are called. In the year 1866 Mrs. Eddy met with an accident, which her medical attendant and friends expected to end fatally; she turned to her Bible for help, and reading from the ninth chapter of Matthew, realized that the same Christ was present now, as then, to heal and to save; and she was immediately healed. After that she spent years in quiet study of the Scriptures, and then began to write the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," which is to-day being read in every part of the world, bringing health and comfort to many thousands.

In this book there is a chapter headed "Christian Science versus Spiritualism;" and in this chapter, on page 71, Mrs. Eddy says plainly, "I never could believe in spiritualism." In the same chapter (p. 99) she writes: "Those individuals, who adopt theosophy, spiritualism, or hypnotism, may possess natures above some others who eschew their false beliefs. Therefore my contest is not with the individual, but with the false system." There are many similar statements in her later writings which prove that the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science knew that she had found something far beyond the above-named teachings. To quote once more from the Christian Science textbook, on page 126 Mrs. Eddy writes as follows: "I have found nothing in ancient or in modern systems on which to found my own, except the teachings and demonstrations of our great Master and the lives of prophets and apostles. The Bible has been my only authority. I have had no other guide in 'the straight and narrow way' of Truth."

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