A critic, while generously acknowledging the good which...

H. S. Hughes, Jr.,

Whitewater (Wis.) Gazette

A critic, while generously acknowledging the good which he had observed as a resultant of Christian Science, voiced no unusual criticism when he took exception to its teachings as to the unreality of sin and sickness.

"The human mind," writes the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, "has been an idolater from the beginning, having other gods and believing in more than the one Mind" (Science and Health, p. 186). The Founder of Christianity had but one God, Spirit, Life, Truth, Love. His understanding of the spiritual reality of God and His creation embraced man and the universe, and operated to annul the seeming reality of material law in stilling the storm, in walking on the water, in passing through closed doors, and in exchanging the seeming reality of sickness for health, of sin for holiness, of death for life.

While scholastic theology has always taught the allness of God, it also fosters the belief in the reality of sin and sickness, and thus has ever been as a "kingdom divided against itself." Mrs. Eddy goes one step farther in her comprehension of the allness of God. In His omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence, like the Master with the spiritual penetration, she saw the only reality of man and the universe, and the consequent unreality of sin and sickness.

There is a great difference between the bald statement that "sin and sickness are unreal" and the same statement when supported by its correlative of the reality of spiritual things. To the uninstructed human sense, sin and sickness are pitiful realities. To the same man instructed in the spiritual realities as taught in Christian Science, sickness gives place to health, and sin to reformation, demonstrating that "sin, disease, whatever seems real to material sense, is unreal in divine Science" (Science and Health, p. 353).

The claim that Christian Science is will-power is refuted by Mrs. Eddy's teachings, and could never be made by one who had carefully read her text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." Will-power, she teaches, "is capable of all evil" (p. 206), while an understanding of and reliance upon the divine Mind enlarges and develops the human capacity for good along all lines, enabling one to do good, but never to do evil.

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