Christian Science: Its Practical Appeal
W. Stuart Booth, C.S.B., of
A lecture on Christian Science was
given under the auspices of First Church of Christ, Scientist, of
The subject of the lecture was
"Christian Science: Its Practical Appeal." Mr. Booth spoke
substantially as follows:
"Sixty years ago there was
but one Christian Scientist in the world, Mary Baker Eddy, and at that time she
had but touched the hem of the Christ in the spiritual illumination which had accompanied
and accomplished her recovery from a supposedly fatal accident. This healing
was realized through the spiritual illumination of a simple Bible verse which
recounts a healing wrought by Christ Jesus and indicates its means and method
of accomplishment.
The Bible
Mrs. Eddy had been from childhood
a devoted student of the Bible, and so it
was but natural for her to search therein for an explanation and understanding
of the spiritual law, by means of which Christ Jesus healed, and which, she was
convinced, was responsible for her own healing. After Mrs. Eddy had verified
this conviction in the healing and redemptive works by means of which she
tested her discovery, she wrote as the first of the religious tenets of the
Christian Science faith this simple, unequivocal declaration: "As
adherents of Truth we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient
guide to eternal Life." This, together with four other brief declarations
of religious teaching regarding God, Christ, the destruction of sin, and the
purpose and work of Christ Jesus, and a pledge of Christian practice are accepted
by all who unite with the Cause of Christian Science. These are found on page
497 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," the
Christian Science textbook. This book was written by Mrs. Eddy in order that
the whole world might share in the spiritual understanding of the Bible, and
thus become beneficiaries of the blessings which this spiritual understanding
bestows.
The inestimable value of spiritual
understanding recognized by Solomon led him to write in his words of wisdom:
"My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. For they
are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh" (Prov.
Christ Jesus
Because people have been wrongly
taught by scholastic theology that the day of miracles has passed, and that the
purpose and function of the church is to prepare men for a future world
salvation, many sincere readers of the Bible who have been told that sickness
and death are part of God's inscrutable plan, have wished that Christ Jesus
were again an inhabitant of the earth, that they might appeal to him to be
healed. To all such Christian Science brings the glad message voiced by Christ
Jesus, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world"
(Matt. 28:20). This promise was given just before that wonderful event called
the ascension, when Jesus' thought became so uplifted and so completely spiritualized
that it found no material oppression. Evidently our Master intended us to see
that, although the human Jesus would not be present with men, nevertheless the
Christ, the spiritual idea of God which had enabled him to do his marvelous
works, would ever be with men, even unto the end of all material beliefs. Mrs.
Eddy's explanations of Jesus and the Christ impart the true concept according
to the Master's own declaration. For instance she writes in Science and
Health, "The word Christ is not properly a synonym for Jesus, though it is
commonly so used. Jesus was a human name, which belonged to him in common with
other Hebrew boys and men, for it is identical with the name Joshua, the
renowned Hebrew leader. On the other hand, Christ is not a name so much as the
divine title of Jesus. Christ expresses God's spiritual, eternal nature" .
. . "Jesus demonstrated Christ; he proved that Christ is the divine idea
of God - the Holy Ghost, or Comforter, revealing the divine Principle, Love,
and leading into all truth" (333-332).
The Christ as expressed today in
Christian Science is "revealing the divine Principle, Love," and is
leading men into the demonstrable understanding of all truth. In thus leading
men into all truth, Christian Science reasons logically, following the
deductive method of reasoning instead of the inductive, as is employed by
others. The inductive method, reasoning from effect, or assumed effect, to
cause, begins with the material concept of man and things, which it claims is
God's creation, and thus argues that God must be humanly manlike. The Bible
teachings are explicit and unmistakable in renouncing and denouncing such
materialistic teaching. For instance, we read: "It is the Spirit that
quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing" (John 6:63). And, "They
which are children of the flesh, these are not the children of God" (Rom.
9:8). Mrs. Eddy's rational and religious sense led her to adopt the deductive
line of reasoning in presenting
the Science of Christianity to the world in her book "Science and Health
with Key to the Scriptures." In so doing she but followed the example of
Christ Jesus, whose constant purpose and practice were consistent with his
prayer that God's will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Christ Jesus put
God first in his logical thinking and speaking and in his daily living. Christian
Science, being the restatement of primitive Christian preaching and the reinstatement
of primitive Christian practice, likewise bases its argument of words and works
upon the Scriptural teaching about God, and reasons deductively therefrom.
God
Christ Jesus, in referring
constantly to God as his Father and our Father, evidently desired to
emphasize the preeminently important fact that God, divine Mind, is the sole
creator and governor of men and of all that is real and true. Judging by his
words and works it is evident that his spiritual sense of God's fatherhood
also conveyed to Jesus the conscious, confident assurance that God's love is
shown to men in ample providence to meet our every need and insures protection from
all evil. You recall that Christ Jesus said that he came to do the will of his Father. Therefore it
is obviously God's will that, by means of applied spiritual understanding, the
sick shall be healed, the sinner shall be reformed and thus saved from sin, the
sorrowing shall be truly comforted, the hungry shall be fed, and the last
enemy, death, shall be overcome. Christ Jesus knew that God's good, harmonious,
perfect nature and being are expressed in His creation, and that whatever does
not manifest the goodness, harmony, and perfection of God, Truth, must be
untrue, a false concept only. Acting consistently from that premise Christ
Jesus healed sickness, reversed the claim of sin, and overcame death.
Mrs. Eddy reasoned in a similar
logical manner when she wrote in Science and Health "If sickness is true
or the idea of Truth, you cannot destroy sickness, and it would be absurd to
try. Then classify sickness and error as our Master did, when he spoke of the sick, 'whom Satan hath bound,'
and find a sovereign antidote for error in the life-giving power of Truth
acting on human belief, a power which opens the prison doors to such as are
bound, and sets the captive free physically and morally" (p. 495).
I would not have you suppose from
anything I have said that Christian Scientists attack or criticize the religious
beliefs of others, for such is not true. Most of those who are now Christian
Scientists were formerly associated with some of the various Christian
churches, although there are many Christian Scientists whose reasoning tendency
would not permit them to accept the religious teaching previously offered to them.
Those of us who were formerly associated with one of the other Christian denominations
have found that Christian Science takes naught of good from our old teachings,
but instead have we found that Christian Science greatly enlarges and vitalizes
that sense of good, making it the dominating influence in our public, private,
and business lives, as well as in our religious aspirations and experiences. From
this I would not have you infer that there is no difference between Christian
Science and the teachings of other denominations. There is a fundamental
difference between Christian Science and all other denominations. Christian
Science is unique and stands alone in its peremptory announcement that
Christianity is not merely an avowed belief, but it is Science, based on divine
Principle and law. Therefore, Christian Scientists have set before them the
definite pronouncement that they cannot properly call themselves Christian
unless their understanding of Christ's teachings stands the test of healing
and reforming, in proof of the spiritual law which expresses divine Principle.
In short, Christian Scientists see that the Christian Science Church would fail
to justify its existence did it not fulfill this requirement so definitely laid
down by Christ Jesus as the test of Christianity.
By way of illustration, let me relate
an experience of one of my friends, who from boyhood had been associated with
one of the Protestant churches. After suffering much from stomach trouble and
after physicians had despaired of helping him, he finally yielded to the
advice of friends and consulted a Christian Science practitioner. After he had
told his troubles to the practitioner, my friend was asked if he believed in
God, to which he made a vigorous affirmative reply. When he was next asked, "What
is God?" he made answer from the catechism which he had been taught from boyhood,
that God is Spirit. Again his answer was from this catechism when the
practitioner asked him, "Where is God?" for he said that God is
infinite, everywhere present. After assuring the Christian Science practitioner
that he really believed that to be true which he had stated regarding God, my
friend was then asked, "Well, if God is Spirit and God is infinite,
everywhere present, then where is your stomach trouble?" My friend saw
that since God is everywhere it must be that stomach trouble is created by
God, or else it does not exist as a reality. And he was instantly healed of
that which had appeared as stomach trouble, when he thought logically from the
standpoint of God. At that moment God became more to him than stomach trouble,
and that correcting of his thought relieved his body, which had been expressing
the discords he had believed to be real and God-made.
Overcoming Evil
Christian Science teaches that one of the best ways to glorify God is to fearlessly face and obediently overcome all that is unlike God and His good creation. It is not Christian Science merely to say that sin is unreal; and then continue in sinful practice, but it is Christian Science to find that there is neither pleasure nor profit in sin, and thereby to strip all sinful beliefs and habits of their false pretences and thus overcome them. As Christian Scientists consistently follow Mrs. Eddy's teachings they are law-respecting and law-abiding citizens; therefore they are happy to observe the law of our land, both in its letter and spirit, which is designed to rid our country of the curse of (. . . . . .)
attraction is Spirit, good, and that therefore their true
desire was for good, for spiritual understanding and spiritual living. Such
practical proofs of the utility of the Christian Science teaching that evil is
unreal and powerless should silence and shame its critics who are disturbed
because Christian Science consistently claims that evil is untrue and impotent
because God, good, is omnipresent and omnipotent.
Christian Science does not teach
us to ignore sickness and distress any more than mathematical science teaches
us to ignore mistakes made in our mathematical calculations. If a child had
written on a paper that two times two equals seven and you told him that was
not true, he might reply that it was true because he could see it on the paper.
You would not regard that as a paper condition, or a pencil condition, nor
would the child's fingers need correcting, because it is obviously a false
belief only. As you would explain this to the child, and then teach him that
two times two equals four, the nothingness of the disturbing error would be
seen and its expression on the paper quickly displaced.
Similarly Christian Science,
reasoning from the basis of God as
the Father, the creator of all that is real and true, deduces the fact that
sickness, not being from God, good, as the Bible teaches, is an error of human
belief, which cannot be ignored, but must be considered and dealt with from the
standpoint of God, spiritual Truth. Thus Christian Science declares that
sickness is no more a condition of matter than was the false belief that two
times two equals seven a condition of the paper on which it was expressed. And
Christian Science proves this declaration by healing or destroying the disease
by correcting the wrong thought or false belief, of which the disease is an
indication or manifestation. Thus it is that Christian Science practice is both
scientific and Christian. It is scientific because it deals primarily and
solely with the mental cause instead of its physical effect. It is Christian
because it is the very same means and method employed by Christ Jesus, who in
his healing ministry, dealt with the mentality, and not the physicality of his
patients. Furthermore, the Christian nature of Christian Science practice is
shown in the reformation and spiritual transformation which accompanies it and
is the most important part of its healing ministry. A woman who was not a
Christian Scientist listened on her radio to a Christian Science lecture which
was being radiocast. The next day she hastened to a neighbor, whom she knew to
be a Christian Scientist, and told her that she had learned from the lecture
that a trouble from which she
had been suffering was due to her hatred of her daughter-in-law, and that she
had been healed of both the hatred and its disturbing effect while listening
to the Word of God expressed in that Christian Science lecture. Do you wonder
that she was eager to purchase a copy of Science and Health so that she might
learn more of this wonderful redemptive law of divine Love? I would not have
anyone infer from this single instance that Christian Science teaches that all
sickness is due to some specific sin, for that is far from true. The generally
accepted world belief in life and mind apart from God, with its coincident
false claim in the reality and power of evil, is responsible for a large portion
of humanity's ills.
Not Mental
Suggestion
However, this simple typical instance
should prove to any inquirer that Christian Science healing is not due to the
influence of one human mind over another, nor is it simply the influence of
mind over matter. This healing was clearly the result of the activity of divine
Mind's ideas, such as humility, forgiveness, unselfishness, and love, which right thoughts antidoted, annulled, and
displaced the hate and its evil brood of self-pity, self-justification, and resentment.
Any honest doctor of medicine will tell you that hatred, anger, fear, and
worry have a very marked bad effect on the human body. Probably the woman who
was healed of the hate and its physical expression, had had medical treatment,
which treatment, however, considered and dealt with the physical effect and ignored
the mental cause. Had she been temporarily relieved by the medical treatment,
it would have been due to her faith in the doctor or in his medicine; but the
trouble would have been liable to recur, because its primal cause, the hatred,
had not been eradicated.
Almost from the beginning of Mrs.
Eddy's endeavor to share with others the spiritual understanding of God's law,
there were some individuals who, although they recognized the mental origin and
nature of disease and discord, seemed unable or unwilling to accept and abide
by the purely spiritual declarations and demands of Christian Science. Such
persons have seemed unable to appreciate and apprehend any healing and corrective
agency beyond or other than the human mind, which has precluded their
observance of and obedience to the purely spiritual laws of Christian Science.
Some of them, in their futile attempt to counterfeit Christian Science, go so
far contrary to its teachings as to claim to deify the human mind, or claim
that each person is God. I speak of this only because such persons claim that
the psycho-therapeutical theories they advance are the same as Christian
Science. A bank teller is protected against counterfeit money because of his
acquaintanceship with the genuine. This is a most commendable method to follow
in connection with your study of Christian Science. Study its textbook, read
its authorized literature, and apply its rules for right thinking and living,
and you will be safeguarded from any counterfeit teaching; and you will have no
desire nor time to waste on them, for you will find that your every need is met
and your religious sense is satisfied by Christian Science.
Years ago a member of our family,
after a protracted illness was told by his physician that material medicine
could do nothing for him, and he was advised by the doctor to try Christian
Science, as he had known of some of its beneficial results. However, the sick
one was so prejudiced against what he supposed Christian Science to be, that
instead of appealing to Christian Science for help, he sent for a hypnotist.
The hypnotist, standing at the foot of the bed on which the sufferer was laid,
held a shiny brass button aloft and directed the patient's gaze and attention
to it. He then made certain passes with his hands over the patient in the
attempt to gain control over him. This failed completely and a Christian
Science practitioner was then summoned. This practitioner did not attempt to
personally control the patient's thought; and, instead of turning his attention
to a brass button or anything material, directed his thought to God, according
to the Bible injunction, "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of
the earth: for I am God, and there is none else" (Is. 45:22). The
experience of this member of our family verified Mrs. Eddy's words in Science
and Health: "If we look to the body for pleasure, we find pain: for Life,
we find death; for Truth, we find error; for Spirit, we find its opposite,
matter. Now reverse this action. Look away from the body into Truth and Love,
the Principle of all happiness, harmony, and immortality. Hold thought
steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these
into your experience proportionably to their occupancy of your thoughts"
(pp. 260-261).
Meeting Human Needs
At the thousands of testimonial
meetings which are held Wednesday evenings in Christian Science churches
throughout the world, grateful acknowledgment is voiced that Mrs. Eddy's words
in Science and Health have been proved true: "Divine Love always has met
and always will meet every human need" (p. 494). This meeting of our every
human need by divine Love is not something mysterious and impractical, but rather is it simple,
understandable, and eminently practical. To appreciate this fact we need to
recognize and acknowledge that we live primarily in a world of thought where
all business is but the expression of thinking, and where the so-called
physical conditions are but states of thought expressed on the body, even as
the Bible teaches and as Christian Science has proved for over half a century.
Now when discord is manifested in our business or on our bodies, Christian
Science enables us to see these as merely indicators of wrong mental
conditions. A steam gauge on a boiler indicates the pressure of the steam in
the boiler. Any engineer who would be so foolish as to attempt to fix the
gauge when it indicated too great pressure of steam would soon be out of a
job. Christian Science teaches us to be good, sensible engineers, so that when
the human body indicates some pressure of fear, worry, anger, envy, or other
error, we do not attempt to fix the body or the indicator, but we turn our sole
attention to the thought condition.
It is plain that all which can displace
wrong thought or false belief, and thus eliminate its expression or effect, is
right thought or true ideas. That is the simple, scientific, Christian way in
which divine Love meets our human needs. For divine Love, God, is also perfect
Truth and infinite Mind, and is therefore the source of all true, real
thoughts. These true thoughts are always and only good in their nature and
effect, as the Bible teaches; and these good and true thoughts alone have
power to support and enforce them, because good and true thoughts are from
omnipotent divine Mind. After she had been healed by Christian Science it was
plain to the woman who hated her daughter-in-law, that her real need had been
for love, although previously she had probably thought that her need had been
for physical relief. Divine Love met her human need when she permitted Love's
ideas such as forgiveness and gratitude to enter and dominate in her human consciousness.
Thus Christian Science meets the
human need for health by first making plain and provable the fact that health
is primarily and wholly a condition of Mind, not of matter; the next step in
Christian Science healing is the replacing in individual human consciousness of
such disturbing false beliefs as fear, worry, envy, selfishness, grief, and
human will by the accession and activity of true, spiritual ideas such as
peace, confidence in God, gratitude, unselfishness, and humility. Exactly the
same spiritual means and simple method are employed in Christian Science to
meet the human need in connection with business problems. Admittedly all
business is nothing more nor less than the expression of thinking, and a truly
successful business is simply the natural result of spiritually right thinking.
A study of the Bible and Mrs. Eddy's writings leads us to see that Christian
Science cannot be legitimately employed to obtain a house, an automobile, nor
any material object, but Christian Science can be and is being successfully applied
to the meeting of all human needs by supplying us with a demonstrable
understanding of divine Principle. And the correct, harmonious result is seen
and manifested in connection with business and all problems as we conform our
thinking to divine Principle, just as the right answer to a mathematical
problem is seen and expressed by one who conforms his
thinking to the rules of mathematics.
Mastering Fear
In Science and Health we read (p.
373), "The love of sin and the fear of disease are the sources of man's enslavement."
Christian Science makes man free by mastering the sources of his enslavement,
the love of sin and the fear of disease. Indeed many people have been healed of
sickness when their fear of sickness
was destroyed by Christian Science.
We all have seen grotesque and to
us highly amusing arrangements standing in garden and farm fields, which we
call scarecrows, because they are designed to frighten crows and other birds
away from the growing or ripened grain and fruit. It is perfectly plain to us
that these man-made, inert contrivances are unable to harm anything, in spite
of their threatening appearance. But timid and unlearned feather-folk are handled
by their baseless fear, and are thereby kept from finding food, and are thus
needlessly limited. Other birds have
gained some sense of the inability of the scarecrows, which naturally destroys
their fears and their attendant limitations, and they feed fearlessly. Mankind,
uninstructed by Christian Science, exhibit less true discernment and
intelligence in this respect than the birds, for men everywhere are afraid of,
and thus give power to a large number and a great variety of scarecrows, all of
their own making. We have scarecrows in our fields of business, in our homes
in connection with our loved ones; some of them are labeled sickness,
accidents, decrepitude, poverty, and old age. Some men make a bugbear for
themselves of a draft of air; others are afraid if they do not have an oversupply
of air. Some men are afraid if they do not have much and heavy clothing; other
men seem to be affected oppositely. And so men are beset on every hand by scarecrows
of their own making which they fear, and which thereby limit their sense of
freedom, dominion, peace, and happiness.
Christ Jesus' Example
Now you will all agree that the
one man in all history who was the most courageous and the freest from fear was
Christ Jesus; and you will also agree that his freedom from and dominion over
fear were coincident with, dependent upon, and due to his spiritual
understanding, his acquaintanceship with God, his Father, and our Father. The
Bible states that Jesus was "tempted in all points like as we are, yet
without sin" (Heb.
To illustrate this point, let us
consider the case of the epileptic boy who was brought by his father for
healing to the disciples during Jesus' absence. The disturbed and discouraged
father had had this trouble held before his gaze so continuously that it had
served as a brass button to him and he was completely mesmerized by it. His
vivid description of the disease to the disciples and the material sense
testimony regarding it served to so mesmerize them that they were unable to
heal the boy. When Christ Jesus came upon the scene and the man appealed to him
for help, the same vivid mental picture was painted and the same material
sense testimony was presented. But Christ Jesus saw this as a temptation to
believe that disease was more powerful than divine Mind. It was plain to Christ
Jesus that the boy's body was not doing something to and of itself, but that
the generally accepted evil belief or belief in evil was using his body.
Therefore, as the Bible states, Christ Jesus rebuked the devil or evil belief,
took the boy by the hand, and lifting him up physically as he had lifted him up
in his thought, he restored him to a condition of normality,
Divine Principle
Unfailing
Of course no one would claim that the
disciples' failure in the least disproved the divine Principle and rules for
healing taught by their Master and our Master. As he explained to them later,
their failure was due to their lack of faith in and understanding of God and
His unfailing, unerring, ever-operative law of life, liberty, and harmony. In
other words, at the moment they had believed in the seeming reality and power
of evil and matter more than they had believed in God; and this false belief,
accepted by them, bound them as it had bound the boy and his father. After the
day of Pentecost when a larger measure of spiritual understanding had come to
the disciples, and they found they could no longer depend upon the personal
presence of Jesus, they learned that they must needs live and express more of
the Christ, Truth, which had enabled their Master to do his marvelous works.
In this connection Christian
Science offers a clarifying explanation of a Bible promise which has been a
stumbling block to many. Christ Jesus repeatedly said that whatsoever we ask
in his name shall be given us. The Greek word here translated as NAME really
refers to character or nature. So we see that Christ Jesus intended us to claim
for ourselves and to express the same spiritual nature and strong, loving
character which had resulted from his spiritually right thinking in connection
with every problem which came to him. Christian Science is the science of right
thinking and right living which our Master used; and by means of Christian
Science we are enabled to pray in his name or nature by approximating in some
degree to the mind which was in Christ Jesus.
This practical appeal of Christian
Science, its logical, scientific reasoning being supported by Christian works,
accounts for the marvelous increase from one Christian Scientist in 1866 to the
present uncounted host of grateful adherents, all of whom are convinced by
their own experiences that Christian Science is the Comforter of promise. And
so today the Christ, speaking through Christian Science, as the Christ spoke
through Jesus, reiterates this compassionate, healing message to all:
"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you
rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart:
and ye shall find rest unto your souls" (Matt. 11:28,29).
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