LETTERS TO THE PRESS

from Christian Science Committees on Publication

Surrey, England Camberley News

I do not wish to trespass unduly on your space, but I should like to point out that Christian Science, while declaring the unreality of evil, recognizes that pain and disease and other evils seem real to the material senses, just as the mistaken conception that the sun revolves round the earth seems real. As your correspondent points out, astronomy corrects the evidence of the senses in the latter case. Christian Science gives a spiritual, scientific explanation of the true nature of God and man and all creation, which corrects the misconceptions of reality called evil, including sickness and pain.

The fact that God is infinite and is good leads inevitably to the conclusion that evil in all its forces is unreal, no matter how real it may seem. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," on page 474: "If sin, sickness, and death are as real as Life, Truth, and Love, then they must all be from the same source; God must be their author. Now Jesus came to destroy sin, sickness, and death; yet the Scriptures aver, 'I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.' Is it possible, then, to believe that the evils which Jesus lived to destroy are real or the offspring of the divine will?"

It is a mistake to think that Christian Science draws its adherents from one sort of people only. Experience in many parts of the world enables me to assure you that the membership of Churches of Christ, Scientist, includes people of widely different experience and circumstances, all of whom are adherents of Christian Science because of their conviction of the truth of its teachings, and who would gladly bear witness to its practical value.

South Bend, Indiana The Mirror

Kindly permit a correction in your paper, since one of your writers recently misrepresented Christian Science by associating it with pantheism.

Christian Science clearly defines God as cause, man and universe as effect. It also definitely states that God is the creator only of that which is spiritual, harmonious, and immortal. It frees God of any participation in that which could injure or destroy and conceives of Him as a divine power, superior to and separate from the laws of a material universe. This being true, its teaching is the antithesis of pantheism.

In her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy says (p. 300): "Spirit is God, Soul; therefore Soul is not in matter. If Spirit were in matter, God would have no representative, and matter would be identical with God. The theory that soul, spirit, intelligence, inhabits matter is taught by the schools. This theory is unscientific. The universe reflects and expresses the divine substance or Mind; therefore God is seen only in the spiritual universe and spiritual man, as the sun is seen in the ray of light which goes out from it."

Christian Science does not give sin, sickness, and death even the "pimple" existence credited by your writer. It does recognize them as very real problems in our human experience, and considers that they are not to be ignored, but to be overcome by spiritual understanding, by a clear realization that God has not created them and is not supporting them. They are not real in His sight, though they do appear very real to mortal sight.

Anything that can be instantly destroyed by spiritual understanding, as Christ Jesus destroyed sin, sickness, and death, is not real in the sense of being eternal and indestructible, and it is in that sense that Christian Science refers to them as being unreal.

London, England The Record

One of your issues contains a reference to Christian Science which is mistaken. May I therefore say that Christian Science teaches quite clearly that men and women are in need—in dire need— of redemption and salvation from sin and from all evil. In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes (p. 202): "If men would bring to bear upon the study of the the Science of Mind half the faith they bestow upon the so-called pains and pleasures of material sense, they would not go on from bad to worse, until disciplined by the prison and the scaffold; but the whole human family would be redeemed through the merits of Christ,—through the perception and acceptance of Truth. For this glorious result Christian Science lights the torch of spiritual understanding."

The fact that Christian Science teaches the essential unreality of the evils which enslave mankind does not deny mankind's need of redemption; and this Science shows how, through spiritual understanding of the nature of God and man and their relationship to one another, salvation is wrought out.

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