Article October 20, 1928 Issue

All earnest religionists must agree that salvation is the...

Ralph G. Lindstrom, Committee on Publication for the State of Colorado,—Brighton

Blade

All earnest religionists must agree that salvation is the supreme purpose of religion. A discordant note in the symphony of Christian fellowship is the distribution of pamphlets, neither accurate nor fair, but destructively critical of Christian Science, as recently occurred. These pamphlets were written many years ago, and have been repeatedly shown to be incorrect in quotation and interpretation; but since they have again been distributed, brief space for correction in your valuable columns is respectfully requested.

First, in one pamphlet, we find Christian Science termed a religion of hallucinations, inconsistencies, and contradictor Contradictions, because it teaches that the real man and real creation are spiritual, and that God did not create evil; and then we find detached portions of sentences from the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, placed side by side with equally detached portions of Bible verses, which they are supposed to contradict. If the real man and universe are not wholly spiritual, how would one explain Jesus' statement: "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing;" and Paul's warning, "To be carnally [materially] minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace;" or Isaiah's unqualified rejection of material man: "Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?" Does it not seem, in the light of the foregoing, that one should give earnest pause before undertaking to criticize another for prayerful effort to substitute the eternal and spiritual for the temporal and carnal?

And then, as to whether God created evil: either God did not create evil, or otherwise efforts to destroy it are vain; for we read in Ecclesiastes, "I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it." Habakkuk settles the matter in his mighty statement, "Thou [God] art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity." Finally, to crystallize the proposition comes Jesus' wonderful summary of evil or devil: "He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him." Both of our critic friends proceed to assert that by the position that evil and sin are unreal, Christian Science encourages evil and sin. This is as mistaken a conclusion as to accuse a teacher of mathematics of encouraging mathematical error by teaching that "two times two is five" is unreal, because it has no foundation in mathematical fact. "Two times two is five" must be proved untrue by establishing the fact that "two times two is four." Evil must be proved (not merely asserted) to be unreal by the transformation which comes through what Paul describes as the "renewing of your mind," wherein sinful, lustful, carnal desires are found to be fleshly delusion, and through the joy that comes of purity and spirituality. Mrs. Eddy states on page 448 of Science and Health: "If evil is uncondemned, it is undenied and nurtured. Under such circumstances, to say that there is no evil, is an evil in itself." And farther on she enjoins teachers of Christian Science: "Try to leave on every student's mind the strong impress of divine Science, a high sense of the moral and spiritual qualifications requisite for healing, well knowing it to be impossible for error, evil, and hate to accomplish the grand results of Truth and Love."

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