In the August issue of Grace Chronicle, the official publication of a Lutheran church in Bethlehem, Pa., the editor devotes several pages to an attack on what he apparently conceives to be Christian Science, but wherein the subject is so flagrantly misrepresented as to call for a public correction for the information of those who might otherwise accept this editor's erroneous ideas as to what constitutes Christian Science.

With that portion of the article devoted strictly to the right of a church council and pastor to designate the requisite qualifications of its membership and to withdraw the hand of fellowship from those who no longer conform thereto, an outsider may not quarrel. An organization is lawfully entitled to purge its membership of those whose professions or practices are considered by it to be at variance with its doctrines. But no pastor or other church officer has a right, in attempting to justify such action to hold such members up in public view as persons "obsessed' with ideas which they have never entertained and which are in fact as repulsive to them as they possibly could be to the pastor himself. Therein lies the occasion for this communication.

In the first place Christian Science is not a "heresy," a "miserable fad," a "humbug," or any of the other choice things named by this critic. It is none of these things because it is Christian and scientific. It is Christian because, without addition to or subtraction from, it insists upon the simple teachings of Christ Jesus as to the duty of those who would be his followers to heal the sick as well as the sinful; because it declines to be judged by any test other than that prescribed by the Founder of Christianity: "By their fruits ye shall know them;" because its unvarying effect is to make increasingly manifest in the thoughts and actions of its adherents the Christlike qualities which are the ideals of Christianity everywhere. It is scientific because based upon the inevitable and self-evident truth of the Scriptural declarations that God is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient good; that He made everything that was made, that He saw everything that He had made and behold it was very good; that His creation was perfect and nothing could be added to it or taken from it. The teaching of Christian Science departs not one iota from these plain and clear statements of Scripture. The "heresy" is all in the minds of those who for one reason or another persist in misstating and misrepresenting Christian Science.

The idea that Mrs. Eddy considers herself to be the chosen successor to Jesus Christ obtains only among those who have accepted as true the misrepresentations of the avowed enemies of Christian Science. The assertion is absolutely false, and it is without excuse because during the years since it was first given utterance ample opportunity has been afforded for all who may have been inclined to accept it to be undeceived. For the information of those who had not read her works, and in response to a question from the New York Herald, "Are you the second Christ?" Mrs. Eddy replied: "Even the question shocks me.... To think or speak of me in any manner as a Christ, is sacrilegious. Such a statement would not only be false, but the absolute antipode of Christian Science" (Pulpit and Press, p. 74). Mrs. Eddy's writings and teachings are consistent with that statement. In the church tenets to which every Christian Scientist subscribes, appear these words: "We acknowledge and adore one supreme and infinite God. We acknowledge His Son, one Christ" (Science and Health, p. 497).

Christian Scientists love and revere Mrs. Eddy as one through whose clear spiritual perception they have been taught of God as they never were before. They acknowledge with gratitude the fact that she has unselfishly devoted herself for the last forty or more years wholly to the establishment of the cause which is most dear to her and which has for its sole object the healing and saving of her fellow-men from sickness and sin. But they are most clearly taught that no human personality could be divine, and that the qualities of Christlikeness are spiritual, not material. The Christian Science church stands for the interpretation of the truth which Mrs. Eddy has contributed to this age as a still further advance toward that ultimate of the whole church, when material forms and ceremonies, man-made creeds and the human intermediaries of the priesthood, shall have been discarded and all men shall worship the Father "in spirit and in truth." Our critic professes to be much displeased with the language of Mrs. Eddy's book, Science and Health. "One cannot read a chapter without being impressed with the fact that there is no logical sequence to the many things that are mentioned," he says. This is extremely unfortunate for the "one," but under the circumstances it is no reflection on the quality of Mrs. Eddy's writings, for hundreds of thousands of intelligent men and women all over the civilized globe have been able to grasp her meaning and have found her language not only abounding in logical sequence but redolent with spiritual truth which, dawning upon human thought, heals, regenerates, and saves. I happen to have before me an article in a library publication, commenting on a record recently noted in the public library of St. Louis of the calls for books in the non-fiction class. The leader in the list for the past year is Science and Health, there having been 618 calls for this volume as compared with the second on the list, Longfellow's Poetical Works, for which there were 416 calls. To any one who is not convinced that no one (especially a woman) can teach him more of truth than he already knows, the Christian Science text-book is a very mine of good. And yet Mrs. Eddy claims no pesonal glory for what she has done. She gladly acknowledges that the Bible is the source of all she has uttered with regard to the Science of Christianity.

Our critic, in protesting Mrs. Eddy's right to offer her interpretation of Bible language, evidently forgets that he is doing a similar thing every time he rises in his pulpit, reads a text, and delivers a sermon in explantation or amplification thereof. When he asks, "Was Mrs. Eddy selected of God to enlighten us properly as to the true meaning of Christ's words?" we say, Let him turn the question upon himself, and he will see how unreasonable and unfair it is.

The gentleman's assertion of his individual belief that Christian Science does not cure all manner of disease, need only be confronted with the fact that all over the land in the Wednesday evening services people are rising in grateful acknowledgment of having been healed in Christian Science of diseases pronounced incurable by reputable medical physicians. These people are usually well known in their communities and the facts as to their cases may easily be verified. Similar testimonies, bearing the full names and addresses of the individuals healed, are printed in large numbers regularly in the weekly and monthly periodicals of Christian Science. One man's mere profession of disbelief in the face of this army of witnesses is worthy of note only as again emphasizing that quality of the human mind which Jesus so aptly described when he said of the doctrinaires of his day that "neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."

The effort of our critic to show that Christian Science is nothing more than an exaggerated attempt to apply the well known influence of the human mind or will-power over the body, is one of the misrepresentations to which I referred at the beginning of this article. To attempt to erect a system of healing, much less a religion, upon the frail foundation of the human will would be indeed a pitiable farce. Christian Science makes no such attempt. From beginning to end of the text-book the efficacy of the human mind as a dependable remedial agent is unequivocally denied. The student is specifically and repeatedly warned against trying to accomplish any good whatever with hypnotism, mental suggestion, or any of the modes of will-power, this being denounced as a false claim to power, dependence upon which is certain to end in disappointment and suffering. How idle to say that Christian Science practice consists in the application of that which Christian Science utterly repudiates! The "prayer of faith" which saves the sick today as in the days when the epistle of St. James was written, is the prayer by which the evil beliefs of the human mind and the degenerating tendencies of human will are supplanted in some degree by the consciousness of the divine Mind,—the Mind that was in Christ Jesus; the Father that "doeth the works;" God "who for-giveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases." This healing consciousness, being omnipresent, is appreciable in proportion as the "carnal mind" of mortals, which "is enmity against God" and is primarily the source of all discord and sin, is put off in accordance with the Scriptural injunction. In Christian Science one learns how this may be done.

It is not true that Christian Science protests against an examination of the life of its Founder. Mrs. Eddy insists that her personality is not involved in the Principle set forth in her works. She tries to impress on all students that Christian Science is of value, not as it is accepted on the say-so of herself or any one else, but as it is tried and proved in individual experience. Naturally her followers regret that false statements concernign Christian Science and its Leader should still occasionally find utterance, especially from the pulpit and in the so-called religious press. Our friend's warning to his people not to investigate Christian Science "just out of curiosity," lest they be swept from their moorings in his church-fold, does not ring true. No one ever did, or ever can become a Christian Scientist except through individual proof and demonstration. Those who are not ready and willing to give it a fair and thorough trial are in no immediate danger of becoming "identified with Christian Science," and thereby bringing down upon their heads the ordeal of the church council. On the other hand, those who are thus ready and willing are likely to be spurred on to investigate Christian Science by the very attempts of their pastor to prevent it.