In the last three issues of the Church Chronicle a clergyman...

Cecil E. Benjamin, Committee on Publication for Cape Province, South Africa,—Cape Town

Church Chronicle

In the last three issues of the Church Chronicle a clergyman discussed Christian Science, pointing out what he believes to be absurdities in its teachings. He admits that it is successful in the healing of certain types of disease, and that it has awakened the church to the fact that divine healing is an essential part of Christianity, but expresses the view that it will eventually "vanish from the earth by the will of God."

As regards the contention that divine healing should be used only in conjunction with medical treatment, it may be pointed out that Christ Jesus, the greatest healer the world has ever known, used no material medication whatever; nor did he attach to his promise any condition that ordinary medical aid should be used when he said, "They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." In Christian Science practice it has been found that "radical reliance on Truth" (Science and Health, p. 167) is necessary, and to the extent that the patient divides his allegiance and attempts to rely upon both spiritual and material remedies at the same time, recovery is invariably retarded or prevented.

"Medicus" writes the following in the Cape Argus of July 18, 1931: "Now I am not a Christian Scientist, but I do know that a relative of mine who had a duodenal ulcer, the X-ray plate of which I saw, was cured of it after none but Christian Science treatment. He also was cured of a swollen septic leg in a single night after he had given himself up to the divine Mind. I have cross-examined him on the subject, and the facts are as I have stated. I may say that he is one of the clearest thinking, most solid-minded men in Cape Town, trusted and honored by everyone."

However, the healing of disease is but a part of Christian Science practice. As has been pointed out by Mrs. Eddy, physical healing is but the bugle call to the larger task of the healing of sin. (See Rudimental Divine Science, p. 2:23.)

Mrs. Eddy's insistence that evil, including disease, is unreal is based upon the premise that God created everthing, and created it "very good." Evil, then, not having been created by God, the only creator, can have only a supposititious existence. This conclusion is exactly in line with Christ Jesus' statement that the devil, evil, "abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him ... for he is a liar."

Here, then, is an open secret of Christian Science healing. The Christian Science practitioner knows that because God is Love all His laws are good. He knows that both sin and sickness are illegitimate and spurious. He knows that despite material sense testimony to the contrary, God made man perfect, in His image and likeness, and to the extent of this spiritual realization healing follows naturally. As Christ Jesus has said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free;" and naturally if truth frees, it can be only the opposite of truth, or falsity, which binds. As Mrs. Eddy has so clearly put it on pages 476 and 477 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick." Christian Science is no doctrine of annihilation, for it teaches that God's creation is eternal. All one can lose is his false material concept of the universe, which as he progresses he lays aside for a more spiritual concept.

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