In an article entitled "Modernism as in England and...

George H. Kitendaugh, Committee on Publication for Jamaica, British West Indies,—Kingston

Daily Gleaner

In an article entitled "Modernism as in England and America Today," published in the Gleaner, a writer makes reference to Mary Baker Eddy. It is therefore assumed that he is attempting to include Christian Science under the classification of "modernism."

To classify Christian Science as "modernism" reveals at once an entire misapprehension of this Science. The spiritual, healing truth presented by Christian Science has been in operation from early Bible times. Moses, Elijah, Elisha, and others practiced this method of healing with marked success, and it reached its culmination in the life and works of Christ Jesus, the master Metaphysician. It is interesting to note also that, according to history, spiritual healing was practiced by the Christians for about three hundred years after the resurrection, until materialism entered into the church.

Far from "turning its back on God's own plan for the communication of His religious truth to men"—as our critic avers—Christian Science insists upon obedience to the letter and spirit of the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount as the means of mankind's redemption from sin, sickness, want, and woe of every description. The first tenet of The Mother Church reads, "As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life" (Manual of The Mother Church, p. 15).

That the "mentality" of the Christian Scientist is not "the antithesis of that childlike docility to which Christ pointed" as the means of salvation is evidenced by the fact that little children, in great numbers, understand and apply the healing truth of Christian Science. However, although this Science is so simple that a little child can grasp its simpler meanings, it is so profound that the most advanced students realize they have only begun to demonstrate the truths presented, in their deeper meanings.

Instead of utterly rejecting "the method of faith," as our critic claims, Christian insists on an absolute faith in God to the exclusion of all other means for the healing of disease as well as of sin. In the book of James are these words: "Faith, if it hath not works, is dead." Any honest seeker for Truth may study Christian Science and by applying its teachings prove for himself that it is a practical and demonstrable religion.

In speaking of other books on mental healing Mrs. Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (Pref., p. x), "They regard the human mind as a healing agent, whereas this mind is not a factor in the Principle of Christian Science." We also read on page 476: "Mortals are not fallen children of God. They never had a perfect state of being, which may subsequently be regained. They were, from the beginning of mortal history, 'conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity.'"

The Bible teaches that God is Spirit; then since man is made "in his own image," man must be the image of Spirit. In proportion to their understanding of the truth about God, and about man as His image and likeness, students of Christian Science are enabled to eliminate from their thoughts and their experiences the beliefs in sin, misery, and disease which go to make up "the old man with his deeds," as St. Paul has it in his epistle to the Colossians, when he admonishes, "Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him."

Thousands of those who have been lifted from beds of pain and misery to health and freedom, from sin and degradation to lives of honesty and useful activity, are deeply grateful to Mary Baker Eddy for the discovery and presentation to the world of this healing, regenerating truth, which is blessing mankind in all walks of life.

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