Article May 27, 1933 Issue

The reply to my previous letter is not one that calls...

Charles H. Parker, Committee on Publication for the County of Cheshire, England,—Chester

Chronicle

The reply to my previous letter is not one that calls for a lengthy response. When the critic purports to set forth some of the teaching of Christian Science in these words, "Nothing is real—pain is imagination—death is delusion. Nothing is, it only seems," I find myself at variance with him, because such a summing up does not truly express Mrs. Eddy's teaching, as the following quotations from the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," show: "Sickness is neither imaginary nor Sickness is, to the frightened, false sense of the patient. Sickness is more than fancy; it is solid conviction. It is therefore to be dealt with through right apprehension of the truth of being" (p. 460).

Now, "right apprehension of the truth of being," as taught in Christian Science, is based on the statement that "nothing is real and eternal,—nothing is Spirit,—but God and His idea" (p. 71), and "He [God] is all-inclusive, and is reflected by all that is real and eternal and by nothing else" (p. 331). In saying that mortal material phenomena are not real we do not mean, or wish to convey, that they are not actual to the senses, but that they are not eternal or spiritual. Spiritual consciousness, reflecting God, divine Mind, is the only real and eternal consciousness.

In conclusion, may I suggest that anyone who is desirous of ascertaining the truth of Christian Science cannot do better than study the textbook, because it is only through such study that one is able to reach a true valuation of statements made about Christian Science.

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