Editorial June 7, 1930 Issue

Primitive Christianity

Clifford P. Smith

The Christian Science denomination, or Church of Christ, Scientist, formed in 1879, is "a church designed to commemorate the word and works of our Master, which should reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing" (Church Manual, p. 17). The organizers were Mary Baker Eddy, who formulated this design, and less than thirty persons who had studied Christian Science with her, all of whom had been members of existing churches and had experienced practical results from this revival of original Christianity. Evidently, Mrs. Eddy and her early students had a larger purpose than to merely form another Christian denomination. They intended not only to revive, but also to "reinstate" (to restore to its former position or state), "primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing." They made a decisive and essential beginning toward this end.

To survey what all Christian Scientists have accomplished to the present time, God giving the increase to their planting and watering, is not the purpose of this writing. In a word, however, Christian healing, as an element of actual Christianity, is now generally recognized as a proved fact and an open possibility by the best informed and most fair-minded observers in all countries where Christian Science has been extensively practiced. Further progress threatens nobody; for, as Mrs. Eddy has said (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 152), "The restoration of pure Christianity rests solely on spiritual understanding, spiritual worship, spiritual power."

Lately, an attempt has been made to controvert Christian healing as a present duty and present possibility by undertaking to discredit the saying attributed to Christ Jesus in Mark 16:17–18: "And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."

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