In his letter in your recent issue, a clergyman says that...

B. Tatham Woodhead, former Committee on Publication for Lancashire, England,—Accrington

Observer

In his letter in your recent issue, a clergyman says that the burden of his complaint against Christian Science is that it has no right to call itself Christian at all.

I believe that I have shown in my previous letters in your columns that Christian Science is based on the teachings of the Bible and of Christ Jesus; at any rate, Christian Scientists themselves are quite satisfied on this point, and there are few more diligent Bible students than Christian Scientists.

It is a mistake to say that Christian Science is incapable of proof either on grounds of reason or revelation, for there are tens of thousands of people in England alone who clearly understand the teachings of Christian Science and who have received a satisfying knowledge of God therefrom, as well as very much blessing in the way of saving from sin, healing from sickness, deliverance from discouragement and fear. Had Christian Science not fulfilled its promises, its organization would not have grown as it has done till it now has churches all over the world; and each year more churches are being added to the total.

As I said in my last letter, Mrs. Eddy did not invent "mortal mind." It is a name which she has given to the carnal or human mind, and she called it "mortal" because it has birth and death, beginning and ending, as distinguished from the "immortal Mind" or God, who is without beginning or ending, and is eternal and infinite.

If there were in our experience no such things as sin, sickness, and death, we should be in heaven, and all Christians are looking forward to a happy eternity free from the entry of such things into consciousness. If, then, sin, sickness, and death are not eternal and can be destroyed—proved unreal—they must actually be unreal now, and can be proved so, and this is what Christian Science is doing in every case it heals or sinner it saves.

In saying in my last letter that "every mortal is a sinner," I was not in any way damaging my case. I was simply stating the truth. Our critic seems to have a conception of Christian Science which is not the truth about it. He says, for instance, that "the Christian Science view of the atonement is empty and misleading." To the Christian Scientist, at any rate, it has brought healing and salvation, courage and joy, filling his life with a freedom he never knew before.

Christian Science is based on the Bible, and to the Christian Scientist it contains no perversions of it. I wish that all who read this could also read the interpretations of the Lord's Prayer and the twenty-third Psalm mentioned by our critic, and given on pages 16 and 17, and 578 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." I believe they would recognize them to be beautiful and inspiring.

Mrs. Eddy's exhortation to her followers was to follow their Leader "only so far as she follows Christ" (Message to The Mother Church for 1901, p. 34). Mrs. Eddy, who was a well-educated woman, throughout her life lived consistently with her teaching. Those who lived with and were closest to her tell of her humility, her love, her gentleness, her unselfishness, and of her spiritual strength. Had her consecration not been what it was, the great works which have followed her teaching could never have taken place.

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