Article September 15, 1928 Issue

A recent issue contains an article by a reverend doctor...

Arthur E. Blainey, Committee on Publication for the Province of Ontario, Canada,—Toronto

Star Weekly

A recent issue contains an article by a reverend doctor entitled, "The Deep Need of the Human Heart," in which a reference is made to Christian Science, which requires a brief correction. The doctor very ably presented the grace, freedom, joy, and restful influence of a correct understanding of Christianity. After quoting from an article in a recent issue of the British Weekly, in which a writer had referred to Christian Science as recommending calmness, quietness, stillness, and such ideas as relaxation and surrender, the doctor went on to say: "Some of us may not be able to find that rest of the spirit through this implicit trust in any church, nor in the sublime but dizzy assumptions of Christian Science." This immediately presents a paradox. The word "sublime" suggests lofty, noble, beautiful, high ideals, expressing refinement, purity, and so forth. Such qualities of thought, being good, are of course spiritual realities and part of the infinite all which God saw and pronounced in His wisdom as "very good," and consequently are enduring, and true, and eternal. The word "dizzy" is more suggestive of confusion, of thoughtlessness, of being heedless, unsteady, with a tendency to fall; not enduring, and consequently not true. Such negative conditions are impossible of association with, or consideration as, true ideas; and certainly never as emanating from that Mind "which was also in Christ Jesus;" and just as certainly having no place in Christian Science, which teaches the assumption that the highest ideals, however sublime, are obtainable only through strict obedience and conformance to divine law.

To follow in the steps of the beloved Master, Christ Jesus, necessitates an honest effort to emulate his words and works. Such aims are without doubt sublime in the highest meaning of the word, and however confused may be the misunderstanding, or false concepts, held by some as to the motives, aims, and accomplishments of Christian Science, such suggestive negations can never be correctly associated with the sublimity of a demonstrable understanding of God, and of man as God's image and likeness. I heartily agree with the doctor that the faith that most perfectly meets our need is the faith that ought to and will prevail. But it is well to remember that faith in spiritual truth cannot be expressed in negations, but rather is it that quality of thought spoken of by Webster in his definition of "faith" as "the recognition of spiritual realities ... as of paramount authority and supreme value."

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