The report of an address on Christian Science before...

Samuel Greenwood

Victoria (Canada) Times

The report of an address on Christian Science before the church summer school, rightly calls for some comment. The division of Christendom into many differing creeds and churches proves the lack of uniformity of thought on religious questions; but when one's difference of opinion develops into denunciation, he is perilously near that unreasoning intolerance which has cursed the past so abundantly.

It is not in any sense correct to say that "Christian Science is the creed of a class," or that "it is a plea for the prosperous who are weary of life." Its appeal is universal. It is the appeal for good thinking and good living, and in this appeal there can be no class distinctions. Christian Science is being sought by rich and poor alike, although in most instances the latter lose their sense of poverty as they gain a better understanding of man's relation to God.

The speaker's acknowledgment that "Christian Science has produced physical, mental, and moral cures," belies his statement that it is "anti-Christian," or that it is "scientifically cruel," whatever he means by that. Christian Science teaches, not that all existence is a dream, but only the untrue sense of being. St. Paul's exhortation to "put off the old man," or the carnal, evil sense of man, implies that that sense of man is not worth keeping; in other words, it is not divinely real, but in its relation to reality is as a dream.

Mrs. Eddy's acceptance of the Scriptural teaching of God's omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience, that is, His allness or infinitude, should not call for criticism on the part of a Christian minister. Christian Science does not teach that God is "everything" in the sense which the speaker evidently attaches to that word, for God's allness could not logically include the things which the Scriptures tell us must pass away, a declaration plainly based upon the recognition that these ephemeral things must pass away because they are not scientifically real, in other words, not permanent. The world should have learned by this time, through its fiery experiences, the folly of quarreling over the definition of God; the demand is not so much for creeds and theories as for actual Christian living.

The present instance recalls a statement by a Congregational clergyman, as quoted in the Longmont (Col.) Ledger: "I have learned that the idea most people have of Christian Science is an erroneous one, and that the thing so often attacked as Christian Science is not Christian Science at all. I am not a Christian Scientist. There are some things upon which we differ, there are more things upon which we agree, and the few things upon which we differ should not prevent us from loving each other and living and working together for the glory of God and the good of men."

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