Somewhere
in the United States there is said to be a settlement of people who hold to the belief that the earth is flat; and because of their refusal to send their children to the public schools, where they would be taught from geography the opposite fact concerning the earth, they are said to have been fined and otherwise punished by the authorities.
In the course of the most masterful sermon ever preached, the greatest Teacher that ever lived left the following clear and unmistakable words with his hearers, words which have been preserved to us during the intervening ages, a fact which attests their truth and practicability: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
Christian Science declares that matter is a false concept of the human mind, but further adds, that as this false concept is destroyed, the divine mind and its manifestation will appear.
After enumerating many of the good works that Christian Science is accomplishing, our reverend critic says, "But the problem remains—How deal with Christian Science?
The personality of God in the largest, broadest sense is not denied by Christian Science, but person in the ordinary sense could not compass unlimited power everywhere at the same moment, as does an omnipotent, omnipresent God.
The Christian Science movement has steadily advanced, during the forty years of its existence, in the face of the most bitter opposition from the advocates of other systems of religion and healing, and this critic's attack is in no way unlike a thousand others which have marked the steady advance of this denomination.
In asserting that all diseases are of material origin, and therefore that the only way to heal them is by the use of material means, the critic entirely ignores the teaching and practice of Jesus, the greatest and most successful healer the world has ever known.