Article February 25, 1928 Issue

With reference to the lecture headed, "Has the Serpent Talked...

Miss Helena C. de Graaf, Committee on Publication for Java, Dutch East Indies,—Malang (translation)

De Oosthoekbode

With reference to the lecture headed, "Has the Serpent Talked," delivered by an officer of the Salvation Army and printed in a recent issue of your paper, in which the said speaker has attempted to unite Christian Science with spiritism, theosophy, and such like, classifying these teachings together as "all kinds of nonsense of paganism," I beg to request you kindly to allow me some space in your paper in order to correct the wrong opinions which seem to exist about Christian Science. Christian Science, whose Discoverer and Founder is Mary Baker Eddy, is the unadulterated doctrine of Christ Jesus, as he preached and demonstrated it over nineteen centuries ago, and is thus wholly based on both the literal and the spiritual signification of the Bible. Mrs. Eddy writes in her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 241), "Take away the spiritual signification of Scripture, and that compilation can do no more for mortals than can moonbeams to melt a river of ice."

The merely material signification of the Bible would have doomed it; but instead of this the Bible has become "The Book of Ages." The language of this book, written by Oriental seers and prophets, is necessarily rich in symbol and metaphor, but its contents are lost to the uninspired, material thought. Mrs. Eddy, in the above-named textbook, shows the spiritual signification of this priceless book, the Holy Bible, by which its rich legacy no longer remains hidden; and so the Bible becomes, as is said of it in the first tenet of Christian Science, on page 497 of Science and Health, "our sufficient guide to eternal Life," to everyone who studies it together with the Christian Science textbook. The word "guide" means, "To lead or direct in a way; ... to instruct and influence intellectually or morally." Now, as Christian Science teaches that the Bible is "our sufficient guide to eternal Life," and instructs us spiritually and morally, it certainly proves that it does not deserve to be classified among "all kinds of nonsense of paganism;" neither can it be united with theosophy and spiritism, neither of which teachings adopt this tenet.

"And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made." Creation was finished; nothing needed to be added, which fact sufficiently appears from the emphatic word "ended." "Whence comes a talking, lying serpent to tempt the children of divine Love? The serpent enters into the metaphor only as evil. We have nothing in the animal kingdom which represents the species described, — a talking serpent,—and should rejoice that evil, by whatever figure presented, contradicts itself and has neither origin nor support in Truth and good. Seeing this, we should have faith to fight all claims of evil, because we know that they are worthless and unreal" (Science and Health, p. 529). This spiritual and moral education, directing men in the way of eternal Life, has already led many a seeker after Truth to the study of the Bible, as is testified at the Wednesday evening testimony meetings in all Christian Science churches all over the world.

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