Article September 1, 2013

Words of Jesus and Christian Science

Joshua F. Bailey

Originally published in the September 15, 1889 issue of the Christian Science Series (Vol. 1, No. 10)

To those who are not students of Christian Science, its declarations of the unreality of matter, its denial of the real existence, and the authority of the personal senses, and its constant affirmation of the reality and allness of Spirit, God, seem fanciful and arbitrary. The denial of life in the body, and of all commerce between soul and body, are received with incredulity, and often considered as inventions of seekers after notoriety. "What," says a surprised inquirer, "do you deny that my soul gives life and vitality to my body?" When told that he has no soul he turns away in utter bewilderment and despair.

And yet there is not one of the declarations of Christian Science that strikes on the ears of this generation as so incredible, that has not awakened the same emotions, and drawn the same exclamations from the men of nineteen centuries ago. The words of Jesus are simply the texts of Christian Science.

Suppose that our children and our young men and women were turned into their school rooms without a teacher, and an arithmetic with only the rules of that science, and a geometry with only the propositions or theorems, were put into their hands from which to learn geometry and arithmetic. Suppose further that they were not only deprived of examples and demonstrations, but the employment of them and all materials for their production, were forbidden. Their situation would be not unlike that of men and women in their readings of the Gospels and epistles, since direct tradition from Jesus, and the practice of Christian healing as taught by him, died out.

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