In your report of the New Hampshire Methodist Conference,...

Edwin C. Buck,—Manchester

Union

In your report of the New Hampshire Methodist Conference, the bishop is credited with the statement that "the presence of evil and suffering" is ignored by Christian Science. May I trespass on your generosity for brief correction?

In the opening words of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," even in the first sentence in the first chapter, on Prayer, Mrs. Eddy indicates the purpose and method of the Christian Science church to destroy sin and sickness. There she says (p. 1), "The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God,—a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed Love."

We agree most heartily with the words of Dr. David L. Martin, delivered to the conference on the same day: "We have lost confidence in men and institutions. We need to sound a note of trust in our fellows, in the church, and in Christ." Never before has the world so needed the support and buttressing which religion alone can give. Never before have religious and social agencies united so closely in a cooperative, supreme, and selfless endeavor to follow the Master's admonition to love one's neighbor as one's self.

The Christian Science church loves and honors every agency striving for the spiritual betterment of mankind. It honors and respects the great church in which the bishop is a spiritual overseer and extols the good work it is doing. But being mindful of the charge delivered him when he entered the office of bishop to "be to the flock of Christ a shepherd, not a wolf; feed them, devour them not. Hold up the weak, heal the sick, bind up the broken, bring again the outcasts, seek the lost;" and ourselves striving earnestly to accomplish these very things; and daily praying "for that Mind to be in us which was also in Christ Jesus; to do unto others as we would have them do unto us; and to be merciful, just, and pure" (Science and Health, p. 497) we ask why Christian Science is stoned.

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