The
writer was born and raised on a farm a few miles from town, and when attending high school he would stay in town from Monday morning until Friday evening.
In the sixth chapter of his letter to the Ephesians, Paul outlines the different parts of the armor necessary for a thorough equipment of protection and defense against evil: "For," he says, "we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
On
the ceiling of a chapel he decorated, Michelangelo has represented God the Father as a majestic man, dignified and beneficent beyond words, and to Christian Scientists one of the most suggestive features of his famous work is this, that in it he illustrates the immensely significant fact that in the innumerable chapels of individual consciousness the divine character is outlined very much after such a superhuman model who is yet subject to limitations which are utterly opposed to the universally accepted dogma that God is infinite, the All-in-all.
Our critic attacks Christian Science for teaching the unreality of death, when, as a matter of fact, it was the mission of the Master to demonstrate this very thing through the opposite understanding of the infinity of Life.
In regard to the statement that churches in New York City make charges for admission, permit me to say that there is no Christian Science church or society in America or elsewhere that makes any charge for admission to any of its services.
Why it should be necessary to criticize the honest and sincere religious beliefs of others in an attempt to gain converts to Christianity, as was done recently by an evangelist, is beyond the comprehension of fair-minded persons.
Our critic who signs his letter "Past Master" may lay down the law as to what are or are not specific doctrines of the Christian creed, but I would point out that he has no right to infer that any individual is not a Christian because he is not a believer in some particular man-made creed or doctrine.
Christ Jesus not only preached that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, but he furnished tangible evidence to corroborate his teaching by healing the sick, freeing the sin bound, overcoming death, and reversing every claim of evil.
Those for whom the Bible has been illumined by Christian Science, see in the iterated metaphor of the Scriptures allusion to the appearing to human consciousness of the spiritual idea.