The Covenant Weekly
Chicago, Illinois

Recently you ran an article entitled "Christian Science Appeals to the Emotions" by Melburn Soneson. I am sure it was not the purpose of the article itself to appeal to emotions rather than facts. For that reason I am taking the liberty of drawing to your attention a few facts which I am sure your writer and your readers will wish to know.

The article finds its premise in a derogatory judgment of Christian Science by Mark Twain. Apparently your writer is not aware of Mark Twain's final judgment of Christian Science, as recorded by his biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, and confirmed by his daughter, Clara Clemens, in her book My Husband Gabrilowitsch: "Christian Science is humanity's boon. ... [Mary Baker Eddy] has organized and made available a healing principle that for two thousand years has never been employed except as the merest kind of guess-work. She is the benefactor of the age."

The article implies that Mrs. Eddy received her initial inspiration from a mesmeric healer, Phineas P. Quimby. This charge is based on a misunderstanding of the vast gulf between mental suggestion and the spiritual healing prayer of Christian Science.

On this subject the Episcopal clergyman and scholar, Lyman P. Powell, after years of research into the whole question, wrote in an article in The Cambridge History of American Literature: "Christian Science as it is today is really its founder's creation. Where she got this idea, or where that, little matters. As a whole the system described in Science and Health is hers, and nothing that can ever happen will make it less than hers." We would differ from Dr. Powell in regard to Christian Science being Mrs. Eddy's "creation." She herself claimed it only as a "discovery" of the underlying spiritual significance of the Scriptures. As she expressed it in one of her poems (Poems, p. 75):

Like all great religious pioneers, Mrs. Eddy has been the subject of hostile misrepresentations by some of her opponents, but if any openminded critic will consult the voluminous evidence by those who knew her intimately over the years he can hardly fail to be convinced at least of her Christian sincerity. An even better way to understand Mrs. Eddy is through her own writings and through the easily obtainable facts of the religious teaching and healing practice she gave to the world.

While there are important differences between the teachings of our two denominations, we do not believe that you would want to misrepresent our religion, however much you may criticize it. For instance, your writer describes Christian Science as a cult that regards health as the main purpose of religion, but this is far from being the case. Like our Master, we regard healing as a vitally important evidence of God's loving care for man—an evidence of the true nature of spiritual reality—but never as an end in itself. Jesus declared: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His reighteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." Bodily health is regarded in Christian Science as among the added things. The great reward of healing is to know God better and thus lose more of that fleshly-mindedness which Paul denominated as "enmity against God."

Your writer is puzzled as to how Christian Science can say that sin is "unreal" and yet speak of our need for a Saviour from sin. Let me use an analogy. Suppose a child to have a nightmare in which he is being chased by a lion. The lion is unreal, yet the child must be awakened from his nightmare in order to understand its unreality. The sinful mortal, caught in the toils of sin, needs to be wakened by his Saviour to man's eternal, sinless, spiritual status as the son of God. Then he is redeemed from the false claims and spurious values that have deceived him and begins to enter into "the glorious liberty of the children of God."

Please be assured that we recognize your right to criticize us as freely as you wish. Our only concern is that no unconscious or unintentional misrepresentation shall enter into this criticism.

Will B. Davis, Manager Committees on Publication

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.—Philippians 3:13, 14.