"Tell us plainly"

Violet Ker Seymer

We read that as Jesus walked in the temple of Solomon's porch many pressed round him with the question, "If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly." Today this demand for information still rings out its challenge to all who profess the Christian religion. Finding that words could not convince those whose spiritual sense was yet unawakened, the Master said, "The works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me." Healing works were the plain proof of Christianity in his day, and Christian Science is presenting this proof today, on the basis of Spirit, as Christ Jesus presented it.

The heart-stirring cry, "Tell us plainly," is responded to with the utmost plainness in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." There Mrs. Eddy unflinchingly presents the scientific facts of spiritual being revealed to her, their inevitable exposure of material theories, and the healing power of Christ, Truth. "The author," she says (Pref., p. x), "has not compromised conscience to suit the general drift of thought, but has bluntly and honestly given the text of Truth." There is a modern tendency to thrust aside the Scriptures as either invalid or impractical. Christian Science is proving the inspired Scriptures, the Word of God, to be both valid and practical. In proof of this, many even erstwhile scoffers and skeptics, having apparently become irreclaimable sufferers, have found in Christian Science the illumination, comfort, and healing of which they stood in such deep need.

Acceptance of and agreement with the evidence of the physical senses and the codes of materialism have led humanity into a maze of sad experiences from which it finds no escape through human devices. It has been prone to look to matter as both its foe and its friend. Men are therefore still looking for the certain and permanent way out of sickness into health, out of sin into integrity, out of their troubles into merited peace.

However material a need may appear to be, it is actually a mental or spiritual need, and it is in meeting this essential need that Christian Science destroys humanity's defects in relation to health, character, and circumstance. It unfolds the way of mental regeneration wrought by divine Mind, whereby not only righteousness, peace, prosperity, freedom, and joy are restored, but also health. Brainology—"a system of thought founded on material consciousness"—is apt to induce skepticism, even atheism. Because of its wholly material and hence false sense of intelligence, brainology is hazardous in theory and effect, imposing penalties for activity and industry.

Christian Science plainly rebukes the self-sufficient attitude of the materialist, to whom dependence upon a power outside of humanly devised systems seems an almost unthinkable proposition. It reveals intelligence as an indestructible quality of divine Mind, God, and thereby restores intelligence where it had seemed to be irretrievably lost. One and all can grasp and prove the fact that it is impossible to sin or suffer through spiritual intelligence. With the same tender love and patience shown by Jesus, Christian Science reiterates the facts of divine Love, Life, Spirit, and thereby rescues those who adopt its teachings from the selfdestructive forces of matter.

"It is plain that God does not employ drugs or hygiene, nor provide them for human use; else Jesus would have recommended and employed them in his healing" (Science and Health, p. 143). Christ Jesus did not perform his healing works in the name of medicine or surgery, of erudition or hypnotism, through personality or popularity, but in the name and nature of his Father, infinite Life, Truth, and Love, available to all. In other words, he revealed the healing power of Spirit and taught that causation is spiritual, not material; perfect, not imperfect; constructive, not destructive.

With unspeakable relief and gratitude, students of Christian Science learn that God, infinite Spirit, constitutes the only cause and the only effect; hence sickness, sin, and death are causeless, lawless, powerless. As metaphysicians, they cease looking either despairingly or hopefully to the physical body, and acquire the true sense of health and strength by acquiring the consciousness of spiritual being, where these abide. Christian Science purges human thought of all that makes for sin or physical impairment. Through reflection of divine Mind the phantoms of sin, sickness, sorrow in human consciousness are destined to be obliterated, for they are unknown to the all-knowing Mind.

Christ Jesus said, "I shall shew you plainly of the Father;" and in "Miscellaneous Writings" our Leader writes (p. 93), "The Scriptures plainly declare the allness and oneness of God to be the premises of Truth, and that God is good: in Him dwelleth no evil." Christian Science is lifting human thought from the hell of doubt, unbelief, fear of evil, and spiritual ignorance into the heaven of faith and spiritual understanding. To the plain question as to whether it has brought to humanity the healing Christ, Christian Science replies not only by its pure doctrine, but by its irrefutable healing works—by demonstration.

Violet Ker Seymer

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August 12, 1933

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