Article August 15, 1914 Issue

The recent sermon by the Rev. Mr.—of Superior, as...

Henry Deutsch

Duluth (Minn.) News-Tribune

The recent sermon by the Rev. Mr.—of Superior, as reported, illustrates the misapprehension which arises from lack of a clear understanding of the Principle, teachings, and operation of Christian Science as set forth in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy. Christian Science is not suggestion, or merely mental healing, so called, the operation of the human mind. It is the restoration of primitive Christianity, a restatement of the teachings of Jesus, fulfilling his promise, "These signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."

Christian Science performs its cures on the same basis upon which Jesus made his,—absolute faith in the power, presence, intelligence, and love of the infinite God. "Thy faith hath made thee whole" is today illustrated again in the healing works of Christian Science. "The prayer of faith shall save the sick" is again fulfilled in the demonstrations of Christian Science,—a faith that is not merely a belief, but such a clear understanding and realization of the nature of God, and man's relation to Him, as establishes the absolute conviction that He not only can but will heal all our iniquities and diseases. It is scarcely less than sacrilegious to attribute the healing done in Jesus' way to the mere force of suggestion—the action of the carnal mind, which the Bible declares is "enmity against God." That this cannot be the basis of Christian healing is implicitly admitted by its most ardent exponents, when they confess to its own limitations, and when indisputable evidence shows cases healed by Christian Science that could not be healed by mental suggestion.

It is not claimed that suggestion is efficacious beyond mere functional, nervous, or imaginary disorders, and no one even presumes to intimate that it ever brought "sight to the blind" or hearing to the deaf, that it ever healed so-called incurable or organic disease or raised the dead. Neither has it ever brought, as an accompaniment to its physical so-called healing, that spiritual uplift and regeneration,—that transforming "by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." Christian Science has healed not only nervous and functional disease, but all manner of so-called incurable and organic diseases, even to the extent of restoring life where all usual evidences of death were present. But beyond these proofs to the physical senses, Christian Science has brought into the lives of thousands that breath of Spirit or Soul which gives irrefutable evidence and conviction of "God with us," and thus has restored to agnostic, atheist, and the weak in faith the religious attribute so indispensable to the real growth, progress, and civilization of mankind.

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