Article September 29, 1928 Issue

In a recent issue appeared the report of a lecture on...

Mrs. Emma Ljunglöf, Committee on Publication for Sweden,—Östersund (translation)

Jamtlands Tidning

In a recent issue appeared the report of a lecture on "Modern Forms of Religion," prepared for the young people's course of the Ansgariiforeningen. The speaker is reported as having said that Christian Science is an upper-class religion. This is a great mistake; Christian Science is not confined to any class, but appeals to persons in all walks of life. It does appeal to those who have the capacity to think for themselves, as the speaker says, and, furthermore, it teaches that capacity rightfully belongs to everyone. It denounces most emphatically all forms of despotic mental control. The speaker's remarks about Mrs. Eddy are not only undignified and unchristian, but are untrue. There is an authentic biography of Mrs. Eddy, entitled "The Life of Mary Baker Eddy," by Sibyl Wilbur. In this book all can become informed of the facts about Mrs. Eddy's healing and her discovery of Christian Science. Not only those who knew Mrs. Eddy personally, and great multitudes of those who have been redeemed from lives of sin and vice, and those who have been freed from sickness and suffering through her teachings, but thousands upon thousands who are not of her faith, hold her in high esteem and accord to her the deep respect of which she was worthy. She was delicate from childhood, but she was not an hysterical woman, neither did she desire nor try to attract attention from others. Always modest and retiring, she lived an exceptionally secluded life, devoting her entire time to the establishing of the world-wide movement which she founded. Mrs. Eddy was an exceptionally intellectually gifted and cultured Christian woman; and she was deeply religious from childhood.

In regard to what Christian Science teaches about matter, sin, sickness, and suffering, the lecturer has either unquestioningly accepted the inconsistent, mistaken statements of its opponents, or from his own investigations he has failed to perceive that the negations of Christian Science are the logical and inevitable conclusions from its positive affirmations. On page 275 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy writes: "The starting-point of divine Science is that God, Spirit, is All-in-all, and that there is no other might nor Mind,—that God is Love, and therefore He is divine Principle. To grasp the reality and order of being in its Science, you must begin by reckoning God as the divine Principle of all that really is. Spirit, Life, Truth, Love, combine as one,—and are the Scriptural names for God. All substance, intelligence, wisdom, being, immortality, cause, and effect belong to God." If God is Spirit, and is All-in-all, as we have Scriptural authority for believing, how can matter be real? And if God, Spirit, made man in His image and likeness, as the Scriptures declare, how can man be material? for "in him we live, and move, and have our being." On page 346 of Science and Health we find this: "When man is spoken of as made in God's image, it is not sinful and sickly mortal man who is referred to, but the ideal man, reflecting God's likeness." It must be plain that Christian Science is the opposite of pantheism, for Christian Science teaches the impossibility of a combination of Mind and matter. God, who is Spirit, is not in man; He cannot be confined. And God, Spirit, Soul, cannot be in matter. When the sin, sickness, suffering, and misery which abound in the world are spoken of in Christian Science as unreal, it is not meant that they do not seem to exist as condition of human experience, but that they are no part of God and the man He created. Christian Scientists feel the greatest compassion for sinning, suffering humanity, and through the ministry of the Christ-Science are delivering mankind from its torment. The lecturer further declares that no moral striving is necessary according to Christian Science; and yet, on page 407 of Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy has written: "Man's enslavement to the most relentless masters—passion, selfishness, envy, hatred, and revenge—is conquered only by a mighty struggle. Every hour of delay makes the struggle more severe. If man is not victorious over the passions, they crush out happiness, health, and manhood."

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