[See page image]

Page 291

form to requirements stated in the Manual of the Mother Church, but they have their separate congregational government. The readers, who conduct the services in branch churches, must be members in good standing of the Mother Church and are subject to its discipline. For the purpose of expounding Christian Science and bringing it to the attention of the public at large, Mrs. Eddy constituted through the Mother Church a body of qualified speakers called the Christian Science Board of Lectureship. The members are subject to the call of the various churches, which are required to give at least one lecture annually, to which the public is freely invited. The denomination also provides publication committees, the duty of which is to correct misstatements in the public press regarding Christian Science or Christian Scientists. It will be seen that although of comparatively recent development, the Christian Science denomination is completely organized down to details.

The Christian Science text-book sets forth Christian Science as a religious system based upon Scriptural teachings. It elucidates faithfully the great fact that God is the only cause and creator; that God made man in his own image and

e- The likeness. that "all is infinite Mind and o~8 its infinite manifestation." Christian

tian Science affirms that God is person in Science. the infinite sense, but not in the humanly circumscribed sense; that the Holy Ghost, as taught in the Scriptures, is "the spirit of truth"; that Christ is the spiritual idea, the image of divine Mind which is one with the Father. By means of direct logical deduotions from these premises, the Christian Science text-book teaches that sin, disease, and all the woes of mankind, though seemingly real to mortals, have no divine authority; that they are material, erring, mortal phenomena, must be so recognized and overcome by spiritual understanding of divine reality. This eternal verity gives hope and courage to those afflicted with disease by revealing to them the divine power, which heals and saves mankind. Christian Science has no kinship with pantheism, theosophy, spiritualism, Hinduism, or hypnotism. It holds that man is inseparable from Deity, being, as Scripture declares, the image, expression, or likeness of God, but denies that he is part of God as pantheism teaches. Christian Science recognizes no mind apart from God. Its practise is in harmony with Jesus's declaration, "Not as I will, but as thou wilt." It therefore repudiates the action or influence of the human mind or will as employed in hypnotism. In the practise of Christian Science, human will is stilled and the divine will governs.

Healing the sick is not the prime mission of Christian Science. Its higher mission is to effect the triumph over all evil. Bodily improvement follows as the natural sequence of spiritual regeneration. It holds that the evil-doer is surely on the road to doom though he may not yet have realized this, while the well-doer is in the right path though he may not yet understand it, for "whatsoever a -- soweth, that shall he also reap." Chris-

tian Science teaches that true and effectual prayer is the spiritual realization of divine Truth and Love and of God's infinitude and omnipotence, which lifts mortals above the power of sin and disease.

LEwis C. STRANG.

II. Judicial Estimate of the System: The human soul was never so insistent as it is to-day on something adequate to rest upon. It wants to know experimentally and immediately that God is all in all. Orthodoxy is to some no longer satisfying; historic forms to an increasing number seem hopelessly inflexible. Coin current ages

:. The long in the soul's vocabulary has lost Theological much of its luster and not a little of

Mrs. Eddy was the first person in the modern world to proclaim the psychic kingdom so convincingly as '0 gain a respectable following and organize it into a compact cult not to be dismissed by Mrs. smart criticism or unintelligent abuse.

" I, I, I. I itself, I,

The when and the where, the low and the high, All I, I, I, I itself, I: '

Mrs. Eddy was an idealist, but had no disposition to be one with other idealists. She would stand alone, associated not with man but God. Sometimes she so used language as to give the impression that her proper place was in the Trinity. These were her words in 1906: God is "divine Principle-as Life, represented by the Father; as Truth, represented by the Son; as Love, represented by the Mother." Sometimes, as a few years earlier, she allowed the reader's mind to drift another way in verse like this:

And the leader of the cult in New York City once wrote Mrs. Eddy thus: "They who refuse to accept you as God's messenger, or ignore the message which you bring, will not get up by some other way, but will come short of salvation."