Your correspondent quotes from the Christian Science...

Gordon William Flower, Committee on Publication for Gloucestershire, England,—Bristol

Evening Post

Your correspondent quotes from the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, "Man is incapable of sin, sickness, and death." He fails to inform your readers that Christian Science recognizes the difference between mortal man or the "old man with his deeds" and God's man, who is created in the image of God. When the complete quotation is given it will be clearly seen that the man therein referred to is the perfect man of God's creating. It reads (ibid., pp. 475, 476): "Man is incapable of sin, sickness, and death. The real man cannot depart from holiness, nor can God, by whom man is evolved, engender the capacity or freedom to sin. A mortal sinner is not God's man." "In divine Science, God and the real man are inseparable as divine Principle and idea."

Your correspondent also takes exception to the following (ibid., p. 23): "The atonement requires constant self-immolation on the sinner's part." Surely self-immolation is necessary to the process of salvation. Christian Scientists recognize that the atonement requires self-sacrifice on their part; that is, the giving up of all sinful beliefs, purifying their lives and characters. Thus do they strive to emulate the works of our Master and to have that Mind "which was also in Christ Jesus."

This efficacious repentance calls from your correspondent the unkind remark that Christian Science is "unchristian." Mrs. Eddy has written in her book entitled "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 270): "I love the prosperity of Zion, be it promoted by Catholic, by Protestant, or by Christian Science, which anoints with Truth, opening the eyes of the blind and healing the sick. I would no more quarrel with a man because of his religion than I would because of his art."

It was inferred that Mrs. Eddy was not an English scholar. Before she discovered Christian Science she was an accepted and popular author and a recognized literary scholar. Later she was made an honorary member of the Victoria Institute in London. In recognition of its merit, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" was accorded a full chapter in "The Cambridge History of American Literature." Christian Science will stand or fall on its own record. Thus I submit the above facts to the fair judgment of your readers.

The men who have done the most for any noble cause have been the men who have heard, and who have been prepared to listen to, the "still small voice."—Selected.

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