Article September 22, 1928 Issue

Through the courtesy of your vicar I have been given...

Charles W. J. Tennant, District Manager of Committees on Publication for Great Britain and Ireland,—London

Hampstead Parish Church Review

Through the courtesy of your vicar I have been given an opportunity of replying to the three articles on Christian Science appearing in recent issues of the Monthly Review. In the short space available, however, it will be understood that it is impossible to give a detailed reply to the articles, which have been written from a mistaken point of view. Most of the information used in compiling them has been drawn from an unreliable source. It is usual, in writing on any subject, to seek information from the textbook on that subject, and not from the biased writings of a hostile critic. That the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, reveals the divine method by which Christ Jesus healed the sick and reformed the sinner is proved by the thousands of cases of sin and disease healed through the study of it in conjunction with the Bible. The fundamental premise of Christian Science is the allness of God, good, divine Principle, meaning thereby that God is the divine source, origin, and cause of all that is real and eternal. From this premise it logically follows that all that exists in reality must be God and the emanation of God, Spirit. One of the definitions of God emphasized by Christian Science is that of divine Mind, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient; and as divine Mind must be expressed in ideas, the universe, including man, must consist of spiritual ideas.

The first chapter of Genesis records the true account of creation in which man is declared to be made in the image and likeness of God. The second chapter, beginning at the sixth verse, depicts a material formation: man is formed of the dust of the ground, and into his nostrils God is supposed to have breathed the breath of life. This material and false account receives a strong rebuke in the second chapter of Isaiah: "Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?" This second account also imputes the creation of evil to God. No one can understand the teachings of Christian Science who cannot discern the divine basis on which they rest, and the difference between the two accounts of creation given in the first and second chapters of Genesis, or follow the two parallel lines of spiritual thought and material belief running throughout the Bible. To spiritual thought all reality exists in the spiritual realm, and is immortal, infinite, immutable, spiritual, divine, eternal. To the carnal mind, which Paul terms "enmity against God," everything is temporal, finite, mortal, material, and mutable. Understanding this, Paul declared, "To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace;" and he further enjoined all followers of our Master to let this Mind be in them "which was also in Christ Jesus." This teaching, scientifically understood, results in the healing of sickness and sin, and is the practice of Christian Science.

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