If one goes among those who attend Christian Science services...

S. T. Downs

Laporte (Ind.) Herald

If one goes among those who attend Christian Science services regularly, he will find that for a very large percentage of them Christian Science has furnished a "Key to the Scriptures," and has made the Bible a daily companion and constant source of inspiration where it had formerly been a closed book. He will find too that Christian Science has made more Bible students than any religious movement of modern times, and this is known and acknowledged by many religious leaders.

The Master taught plainly that God is one God, and not that God is three persons. In reiterating the Old Testament teaching, "Hear, O Isreal : The Lord our God is one Lord," he approved the answer given him by the scribe who wanted to know the greatest commandment of all, and who said, "There is one God ; and there is none other but he." In thus restating the Jewish teaching of one God, and in a great many other ways, Jesus taught specifically that he was not the Deity, and a careful study of the Scriptures in the light that Christian Science throws on this subject shows that it would have been utterly impossible for Jesus to have been God, and that he never intended to teach that he was God. He made many statements that are in complete harmony with his answer to the question from the Jews, "Who art thou?" in which he differentiated very clearly between the Father and the Son in these significant words : "I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things. And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him."

In Christian Science the term Jesus is used chiefly to designate the humanity of the Master, but it should be understood that this teaching does not reduce him to the level of ordinary mortals. He revealed the Christ, defined in the Glossary of Science and Health as "the divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error" (p. 583). This does not mean that he was not the promised Messiah, for on page 131 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy states, "Jesus' works established his claim to the Messiahship."

Christian Science denies that sin is real, for the reason that God did not create it, and there can be no reality in that which He did not create. Sin seems real to the human consciousness until the consciousness is instructed out of and lifted above the belief in and the love of sin, and this is accomplished through the understanding and demonstration of spiritual law. There have been almost countless testimonies given as to how Christian Science destroys the love of sin and brings a desire to be more godlike, but to say there is no sin, and at the same time to indulge in sin, is a sin in itself.

Christian Science is the Science of divine Mind, and it states accurately how God governs man and the universe through spiritual laws. There are no apologies to be made, because it has been found that God's law is at variance with much that mankind has regarded as law, and from first to last Christian Science honors God, no matter how much it may dishonor humanity's misconception of law. This Science cannot be learned as a mere intellectual accomplishment, but it can be understood and demonstrated only by adding "precept upon precept; line upon line," in our daily living, and in the healing of sin and sickness. This great teaching cannot merely be believed, but it must be proved, and through proving we know there can be no other real science than the Science of divine Mind. This shows clearly what Paul meant when he said, "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."

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