One mistakes the teaching of Christian Science who...

H. M. Mason

Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times

One mistakes the teaching of Christian Science who calculates that its modus operandi is a mere wordy denial of sin and disease, and an affirmation of health and life. A person could accomplish no more toward the destruction of disease and the establishment of health through such a process than one could toward the removal of discord and the supplantation of harmony in connection with music by this same method. Both undertakings require demonstrable knowledge of what is true, before one can detect and dispose of the false sense of that which is true.

It is all wrong to say that Christian Science teaches there is "no body, no matter, and consequently no pain; and that all pain, sickness, and disease exist in mind only." Christian Science teaches that when we know and demonstrate enough of the truth which Jesus said would make free, we shall not find ourselves unclothed (bodiless), but, as Paul says, "clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life." No one could reasonably expect to bring about this change in any other way than through an educational process; and as the human mind is renewed with truth, in a corresponding degree this transformation will take place. No one could immortalize his body through the employment of material laws and their remedies. "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing." Man's body is subject to his thought. This fact is supported by evidence from every conceivable view-point. For instance, sorrow or some mental agitation must precede tears; mortification or some perturbance comes before the flushed cheek; pallor may result from terror. Health appeared when Jesus said: "Thy faith hath made thee whole."

Understanding is the very heart and soul of Christian Science teaching. It reiterates in its every line Christ Jesus' statement: "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Our critic misunderstands Mrs. Eddy's statement that "all disease is the result of education," as he construes it to mean that all education results in disease, while Mrs. Eddy explains that "as a man thinketh, so is he" (Science and Health, p. 166). It was wrong education that taught and perpetuated the belief in a flat earth, and it was right education that changed the thought of the world to the contrary.

The clergyman said: "God believed in leprosy," and decreed a separation of such sufferers from mankind. He also stated that "a cure for leprosy has been discovered. This is a result of the education which the Christian Scientists would do away with." This process of reasoning is equivalent to saying that the belief of God regarding leprosy is foolishness to advanced education. Christian Science bases its teaching upon the Bible statement that God "will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth"—the truth that His anointed one said would make free. On this basis Jesus healed the lepers. The rediscovery of this method of cure is Christian Science—an education that all may acquire.

"Mental suggestion" is as foreign to Christian Science as it is to mathematics. If it were employed in the endeavor to heal disease, it could only bring about an exchange of beliefs, and the belief accepted might be no purer and no healthier than the one rejected, while the influence of Christian Science regenerates mind and body. It is true that the Bible refers to "sin, sickness, disease, and pain." Perhaps the most sweeping statement making reference to these conditions was made by Isaiah, who said, "The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it." But Isaiah also presented the foundation upon which to build health: "Put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow."

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