PERSPECTIVE ON THE NEWS March 26, 1979 Issue

More truth-telling

An article on the Christian Science movement that appeared recently in The Wall Street Journal can serve as a useful reminder of the words written by Mary Baker Eddy when the press was mounting one of its frequent campaigns against her and her teachings: "Rest assured that the injustice done by press and pulpit to this denomination of Christians will cease, when it no longer blesses this denomination."^{The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 151;}

It is not surprising that a church which uncompromisingly challenges current materialism should receive that kind of "blessing" from time to time! It might indeed be a sign of declining vitality if our church found itself wholly at peace with the secular values that have eroded so much of contemporary religious life. From its very beginning, Christianity has risen to new heights under the spur of hostile attempts to bury it, and that is equally true of the Church founded one hundred years ago by Mrs. Eddy to "reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing."^{Manual of The Mother Church, p. 17;}

The opening paragraphs of this latest article attempt to discredit all Christian Science healing by recounting a failure. Such a device necessarily has to ignore the century-long record of Christian Science in healing similar cases, many of them pronounced terminal by medical authority. It is understandable that materialism should feel a need to keep the vitality of Christian Science healing out of sight, but this in itself is a confession of the weakness rather than the strength of materialism.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Editorial

Scientific Christian healing