Christian Science: Its Divine Authority

ONE of the most noteworthy features of the Christian Science movement is the remarkable spread of its teachings throughout the civilized world. In the year 1879 the first Christian Science Church was established with but twenty-six members. During the intervening years there have been established over twelve hundred churches of this denomination, and the membership has increased by tens of thousands. One can scarcely venture, nowadays, upon sociability with strangers without encountering those who are deeply interested in the subject of Christian Science. There is a reason for such a widespread interest, and it is based on the fact that the original purpose, "To organize a church designed to commemorate the word and works of our Master, which should reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing” (Manual, p. 17), is being worked out. There are scores of religions, but only one Christianity, and the Christianity of Christ Jesus heals the sick and sinning by one and the same process.

If one were to analyze all the different religious systems or beliefs which tradition or usage has handed down to us, he would recognize that they all claim to publish revealed truth, and by revealed truth we mean that truth which comes from God, and appeals to the spiritual senses of men, in contradistinction to what is commonly known as rationalistic truth, which appeals only to the physical senses, and to human reason. Whatever claims to publish revealed or spiritual truth is properly characterized as religious, and having recognized this thought as common to all religions, we need to note that whatever may be the nature or quality of these so-called revelations, that which differentiates the demonstrable revelation of Christ Jesus from them all is its power to heal the sick and raise the dead. "I am come," said Jesus, "that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." His healing works, his resurrection, and his final ascension demonstrated this life-giving element in Christianity. When he taught the great verity that God heals the sick, he straightway proved it, so that it ceased to be a mere doctrinal theory and was shown to be demonstrable truth. In like manner he was able to prove the vital worth of his teaching concerning the resurrection of those "dead in trespasses and sins." Other religious leaders might declare doctrinal beliefs concerning God and man's relation to Him, but Christ Jesus alone presented the verification. Indeed he was able to prove all that he taught, thus establishing Christianity as the only demonstrable religion known to men. It is therefore the life-giving or vitalizing power in Christianity which differentiates it from every other faith, and it is for this reason that the intelligent and educated classes are today beginning to recognize that such religious beliefs or systems as Buddhism, Shintoism, Taoism, and so forth, are not so much religions as they are philosophies, since they lack the life-giving element which characterizes true Christianity, lifts it above the plane of a mere philosophy and establishes it as a demonstrable religion.

There are those who believe that Christian healing was for a particular time and people, and that the healing power is therefore no longer available. As Christian Scientists we believe, on the contrary, that inasmuch as this living truth was revealed from God, it must, like Him, be the same for all time, an unchanging truth, and that it can no more become ineffective than can God Himself. If it seems to be hid, ''it is hid," as says the Scripture, "to them that are lost: in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not." It is not the healing truth which is lost, but the people's understanding of it is obscured, until thought is illuminated by Christian Science. We contend, moreover, that this Christ-spirit acts in obedience to the laws of God, not to the so-called laws of men. It operates in obedience to divine law with such accuracy that it may be understood and demonstrated by us today with the same mathematical precision with which Jesus and his disciples demonstrated it. Two things, therefore, we need to understand in the teachings of Christ Jesus: first, the activity or vitality of spiritual truth; and second, its law of operation. The one is compassionate and healing, the other must be scientific, and whoever understands both is not only a Christian, but a Christian Scientist.