According to a recent announcement in the press, an...

Samuel Greenwood—Vancouver, British Columbia

The Sun

According to a recent announcement in the press, an address was given before the Ministerial Association by a local clergyman in which Christian Science was referred to as a parody on Christianity. Christian Science is the religion of a large and ever-increasing number of earnest and devoted men and women who, it might be noted, have accepted its teachings because of conviction and practical demonstration, and not because it was the religion of their parents. They are generally admitted to be an intelligent body of people.

On what grounds, may we ask, do these ministers of the gospel base their decision? Is it because Christian Science is encouraging men to have more faith in God than they had before? Is it because it teaches that Christ is still the great Physician, and as ready to help men today as he was twenty centuries ago in Palestine? Is it because its adherents are actually finding in the practice of its teachings that which feeds their spiritual hunger and brings relief from the troubles and torments of mortal existence? Or do they take the position that because Christian Science does not coincide with their viewpoint in all things, it must necessarily be wrong?

It should be remembered that Christianity is the gospel of deeds, not of creeds. Jesus gave an infallible rule whereby to judge such things, a rule that rises above all human theories and opinions: that a tree must be judged by its fruits, not by its leaves or the soil in which it grows. He did not say that a Christian must subscribe to a particular doctrine. He did not teach that one's Christianity depends upon whether he accepts the doctrine of the Trinity, or the Adamic fall, or predestination, or whether he believes in any of the other things over which men have fought and divided. What he did say was, "By their fruits ye shall know them," implying that it is not one's articles of faith but the life he lives that makes one a Christian.

If to help the sinning to reform and the sick to get well, if to help men to be purer and happier, and thus to add to the world's joyousness and right living, is a parody on Christianity, how shall the genuine be described? If it is a parody on Christianity to strive for a practical understanding of God as One who, as David expressed it, "forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases," what shall be said of the Scriptural writers who presented this concept of God? If it is a burlesque on true religion to worship Deity as supreme, to declare His omnipotence and omnipresence, and to acknowledge no other power, what shall be said of the Master and his apostles, whose practice was based on these truths? If in the first century it was not a parody on Christianity to teach its practical application to all human need, what makes it a parody to do this in the twentieth?

It is recorded in the New Testament that Jesus enumerated certain "signs" by which the true believer was to be recognized. Do the churches which these ministers represent manifest any of these signs which the Christian Science church does not? Are there any proofs of Christian practice which Christian Science does not give, but which are to be found in other religions? Leaving human doctrines and dogmas out of the question, for these do not decide one's Christianity and never did, in what thing vital to the Christian life is the Christian Science church deficient beyond other churches? In what direction do the faith and works of Christian Scientists fall below those of other Christians, that their religion should be publicly proclaimed a parody on Christianity?

Do not these brethren exhort their hearers to have more faith in God, and still more and more faith? Do they not teach them to observe the ten commandments, and to abide by all the Master's teachings and behests? Christian Science does not do less than this. Wherefore, then, do those who are pledged to be loyal to the teachings of the Nazarene meet together to sneer at their fellow religionists, who are working just as sincerely and successfully for the betterment and redemption of humanity? One is constrained to ask what true Christianity is, if the honest endeavor to make it practical is but a parody.

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