Article May 19, 1928 Issue

In a rabbi's comments on the subject of Christian Science,...

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

Ohio Jewish Chronicle

In a rabbi's comments on the subject of Christian Science, as reported in a recent issue of your publication, it would appear that his antipathy for what he terms Jewish Science is responsible for his attack on Christian Science. He speaks of "a controversy now raging between Jewish and Christian Science," as an example "of a large scale competition and of aggressive salesmanship." The fact is that there is no such controversy, inasmuch as the adherents of Christian Science are wholly concerned with the demonstration of its divine Principle, without any reference to what efforts may be being made in the Jewish church. The rabbi is somewhat inconsistent in complimenting himself upon his religious tolerance, after having denounced Christian Science and dismissed it from consideration because of its "absurdity." A religion can hardly be characterized as absurd, which is daily healing sickness and sin and bringing happiness and comfort to its adherents.

In reply to his inference that a Christian Scientist temporizes with disease, may I call attention to the fact that, quite to the contrary, the practitioner of Christian Science deals with disease, not by temporizing with it, but by at once recognizing its basic unreality, and in this way destroying it. Allow me to correct one further inference by the rabbi, by stating that mere faith-healing, in the ordinary sense of the term, is not the practice of Christian Science. On page 54 of her book "Retrospection and Introspection," Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, has written: "Millions are believing in God, or good, without bearing the fruits of goodness, not having reached its Science. Belief is virtually blindness, when it admits Truth without understanding it." The healings of Christian Science are effected, not through blind faith, but through the practitioner's understanding of the spiritual fact that, since God is wholly good and since He is the creator of all reality, His spiritual creation is perfect like Himself; and therefore that all that is evil, inharmonious, or diseased, is not a part of God's perfect creation, but is unreal and false.

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