The text selected by the Rev. Mr.—for his sermon, as reported recently by the Union, forms a fitting basis for correction of his misstatements regarding Christian Science. Quoting from Paul's second letter to Timothy, the doctor took for a text, "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." Terming Christian Science a "strange mixture of truth and absurdity," the speaker said that it "teaches people not to use the medical knowledge and skill which God has put in their power," and that "it proceeds upon the strange assumption that the less use we make of the knowledge and the powers God has given us, the more He will come in to supply the place of them."

A strange mixture indeed, but fortunately Christian Science lays claim to no such mixture. On the contrary, its very foundation is laid in an exact, demonstrable knowledge of God, and of man in his relation to Him. It does not teach that God has given man a knowledge of medicine, but that the use of medicine and material remedies is the outcome of lack of knowledge of and trust in Him. To believe that God has endowed man with such knowledge, would be to hold Him responsible for most of the ills to which mortals are heir. If God has a knowledge of medical practice, He must as well have a knowledge of the need for its application, and sickness and death must be good, for in Habakkuk we read that God is of "purer eyes than to behold evil," and cannot "look on iniquity." To admit that God is the author of medicine, is to admit that He is the author of sickness, for we learn in Genesis that God made all that was made. Without sickness there would be no need of medicine, and to believe that God sends sickness, then endows man with the knowledge by which to overcome sickness, is to set up a kingdom divided against itself, and accuse God of being its author.

Christian Science is not a negative philosophy, teaching truth by a process of "don'ts," but is positive in its assertion that absolute reliance upon God to heal all our diseases is more efficacious than a poisonous drug, and more conducive to spiritual being. Christian Scientists refrain from using medicine because they have determined that that which is without intelligence is unable to affect them unless they are endowed with faith, and faith is a quality of mind. They therefore take the short cut and deal primarily with mind, knowing that disease is but a product of mortal or carnal mind, as the apostle Paul termed it, and is destroyed only by reliance upon divine Mind.

Medicine is not a science. None of its hypotheses are provable absolutely, as every conscientious physician will admit. Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, says: "Deductions from material hypotheses are not scientific. They differ from real Science because they are not based on the divine law. ... The so-called laws of matter and of medical science have never made mortals whole, harmonious, and immortal" (Science and Health, p. 273). Christian Science rejects the opinion that medical knowledge and so-called skill are derived from God, and holds with Paul that "God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." Spiritual power, love, and a sound mind protected the ancients from the plagues, saved them from the jaws of the lions, and were with them in the fiery furnace. In the works of Jesus and the apostles, and during the first three centuries of the Christian era, this power, love, and a sound mind healed the sick, raised the dead, and performed many wonderful things.

Four thousand years of medical knowledge have not lessened disease, but with the increase of that knowledge disease have increased in number. Christian Science has no quarrel with the medical fraternity, and respects the conscientious endeavors of the many broad-minded physicians who are endeavoring to lift their fellow man out of the bondage of sickness, but it cannot accept the statement that medical knowledge is derived from God, because its fruits attest otherwise. In fact, thousands of Christian Scientists know from experience that medical practice has not infrequently left them worse than it found them, while the "spirit of power, and of love, and of a sound mind," has resulted in health, harmony, and longevity. The practice of medicine, or medical knowledge in action, is not absolute in its effects, and an infinite, all-knowing, all-powerful God could not confer knowledge lacking in accuracy.

Jesus said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Can it then be said of Christian Scientists that they do not exercise the knowledge God has given them when they "know" that God has created man perfect, in His own image and likeness; "know" that the same Mind which casts out sin will heal sickness as well; "know" that when they have the Mind "which was also in Christ Jesus," they will be able to do the things that he did, and that he said they should do, and even greater; when they "know" that absolute faith in God is not possible while there is still faith in drugs? Possibly Christian Scientists are profiting by the experience of Asa, who, as we read in Chronicles, "in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians. And Asa slept with his fathers."

If our critic, in his inference that Christian Science does not teach the full gospel, refers to some religious doctrine which includes both spirit and matter, good and evil, as being coequal and powerful, then he is correct; but if he refers to the "good news concerning Christ and his salvation," then he errs. The first tenet of Christian Science, as stated in the Christian Science text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 497), is: "As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life." It accepts in its entirety Jesus' command to "heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils," and considers the methods he employed as the highest manifestation of the divine intelligence.

Christian Science can be judged only by its fruits, and if its critics busied themselves with demonstrations of the truth of their teachings, there would be little time left for attacks upon or criticisms of a movement which has brought happiness to thousands of homes, and health and strength to hundreds of thousands of men and women all over the world.