What constituted the gulf between Christianity and the other religions with which the early Christians were surrounded, was the fact that Jesus separated once and for all the claim of the power of the human mind to effect good or evil, from the scientific knowledge of absolute Truth as the only real existent power.
Long
ago Dean Swift wrote concerning "a creature pretending to reason that should value itself upon the knowledge of other people's conjectures and in things where that knowledge, if it were certain, could be of no use," with the ironical comment, "What destruction such doctrine would make in the libraries of Europe!" Philosophical writings are easily divisible into two classes.
I always
look at The Christian Science Monitor from two view-points: first, that of a person who is trying to practise Christian Science; and second, that of a person who in working for several years upon daily newspapers had to read eight of them every day, and who knows how they are made.
Your editorial, embodying kindly advice to those exposed to the heat, and commending to them "to use a little Christian Science," has been read with much interest; and your good-natured irony certainly contains many elements of truth with regard to the potency and power of Mind.
Christian Science teaches belief in the Bible, and the first of the religious tenets of Christian Science reads as follows: "As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life".
