As Christian Science, when correctly presented, is never at a disadvantage regarding Bible teaching, as recently claimed by a clergyman, I shall appreciate space in which to present to your readers a brief reply to his remarks, as published in a recent issue.

Christian Science presents the teaching of Christ Jesus as an exact Science based on spiritual law. Naturally this law never varies and is applicable to every circumstance of mankind, comforting the sorrowing, purifying the sinner, and healing every known disease. Therefore Mrs. Eddy wrote, on page 313 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "Jesus of Nazareth was the most scientific man that ever trod the globe. He plunged beneath the material surface of things, and found the spiritual cause." Every thinking reader will recognize at once the importance of getting, from authentic sources, correct information regarding such a teaching. Now one of the simplest statements that can be made regarding this law is that "like produces like." Jesus never departed from it. It appears clearly in his logical declaration that a good tree cannot produce evil fruit, nor an evil tree produce good fruit. From the same standpoint of scientific knowledge based on absolute law, he said to Nicodemus, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit."

By strict adherence to this law Mrs. Eddy has reconciled Scriptural teaching from the beginning to the end of the Bible, teaching which cannot be reconciled in any other way. By this law it will be revealed that the same distinction which Jesus made between Spirit and flesh was made in the first and second chapters of Genesis, between spiritual man, made in the image and likeness of God, sinless and forever blessed of the Father, and man made of dust. It is the spiritual man of God, and not a mortal sinner, that never becomes sick or commits sin. For as we read in John, "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God." Here the same absolute law is made apparent. That which is of God cannot be sinful or sick. "As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly."

In making this distinction Mrs. Eddy did not say or conclude, as implied by the critic, that the second chapter of Genesis is a lie, or that the Scriptures are untrue, any more than did Jesus when he said, "The flesh profiteth nothing," but that both dust and flesh are examples of an unreal creation and presented as such. Here are portrayed and illustrated scientific distinctions between truth, based on spiritual law on the one hand, and the phenomena of negative law on the other. Mrs. Eddy was just as bold in setting forth this law and explaining it as the law itself required her to be, and no more so. The fact is that an understanding of this law as revealed in Christian Science will make, to the unbiased reader, a new book of the Bible, filled with treasures of scientific truths.

The same distinction made here between Spirit and matter disposes effectually of the supposition that Christian Science is pantheistic. There is no other teaching so completely free from it. When the critic attempted to ridicule Mrs. Eddy's teaching regarding pain seemingly caused by a boil, and raised the question whether the suffering is in the boil or in human consciousness, he appears to have entered a philosophic field quite unfamiliar to him, and unwittingly shows how much closer he is to pantheism than Christian Science teaching. As Jesus said to Nicodemus, in urging the necessity of spiritual birth, "If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?"

The most eminent physicists are in accord in saying that it is impossible to prove there is such a thing as matter. Professor Fiske said, "All the qualities of matter are what the mind makes them, and have no existence as such apart from the mind." Also, "apart from consciousness there are no such things as color, form, position, or hardness, and there is no such thing as matter." Thousands of years ago a Chinese sage said, "There is nothing external to consciousness." Evidently pain must be in consciousness. If not, how could one feel it?

Now Christian Science goes farther than the physicists and shows that matter is not only an expression of thought, but of wrong thought, and that the whole material universe, with all its sin, pain, sickness, and death, is a manifestation of human, material belief, human conceptions, counterfeiting spiritual realities. They are the things that are seen and temporal, as distinguished from the things that are not seen but eternal. Paul saw the distinction clearly when he wrote, "Henceforth know we no man after the flesh."

The critic can by no means square himself with the Scriptures in saying that temporal things are real, things that will last only so long as people can be prevailed upon to believe in them instead of in realities. Every thinking reader should know this absolute fact and prove it for himself,—namely, that the only origin of evil is the belief in its reality. Sin begins to lose its attraction, and sickness its seeming power, whenever this fact becomes apparent. This truth makes free, and this truth is both Christian and scientific.

When Jesus said, "What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them," he disclosed the mental nature of all things, and showed that their acquisition depends on a state of consciousness. Every Christian, when praying truly, turns away from matter to a spiritual source for all good. The mental state which approves all kinds of material methods of healing, and condemns that which successfully relies upon the spiritual means which God alone has provided, is left to the charitable judgment of your readers.

Christian Scientists pray, as Solomon prayed, for wisdom, for an understanding of spiritual law through which God governs His people. They pray to Him who Mrs. Eddy in one of her messages to The Mother Church says "is the infinite Person" (Message for 1901, p. 4), as distinguished from human personality. "God," she there writes, "is the author of Science—neither man nor matter can be. The Science of God must be, is, divine, predicated of Principle and demonstrated as divine Love; and Christianity is divine Science, else there is no Science and no Christianity."