Article March 12, 1932 Issue

Your issue of October 23 contains a synopsis of a sermon...

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

Muswell Hill Record

Your issue of October 23 contains a synopsis of a sermon preached by a bishop in which he makes some remarks about Christian Science which need correction. He says that Christian Scientists make two mistakes, the first being "their presumptuous neglect of the Christian sacrament." The bishop has not drawn this conclusion from study of the writings of Mary Baker Eddy; for in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," she devotes a chapter to the subject of Atonement and Eucharist.

Christian Scientists regard the sacrament as a spiritual communion, and not as a material rite. In the chapter alluded to, Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 35): "Our Eucharist is spiritual communion with the one God. Our bread, 'which cometh down from heaven,' is Truth. Our cup is the cross. Our wine the inspiration of Love, the draught our Master drank and commended to his followers." On two Sundays of each year the subject of the Lesson-Sermon in the Christian Science Quarterly read in all Christian Science churches is "Sacrament"; and in all the branch Churches of Christ, Scientist, communion, as understood by them, is observed.

Secondly, our critic says that Christian Scientists contemptuously "brush aside as useless...the sacrifice and devotion of doctors and surgeons all over the world." This is not the case, for Christian Scientists greatly admire the self-sacrifice and devotion of the medical profession as a whole. They themselves, however, have found a better method of healing the sick than material medicine. They understand that the method of Christ Jesus was the best that has ever been presented to mankind, and that his was a purely spiritual method. Through spiritual understanding he eradicated false belief, the fear, ignorance, or sin, which, as Mrs. Eddy says on page 411 of Science and Health, is "the procuring cause and foundation of all sickness;" and he said that all those who believed on him (understood his teaching) would do the works which he did.

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