DEEP REVERENCE FOR BIBLE

Southland Times, Issue 23947, 13 October 1939, Page 9

DEEP REVERENCE FOR BIBLE

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE VIEWPOINT WHAT IT OFFERS TO MANKIND “Christian Science: The Science of Christ Healing,” was the subject of a lecture at Dunedin last night by Mr Colin R. Eddison, of London, a member of the board of lectureship of the Mother Church, First Church' of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, United States. Christian Scientists turn naturally to the Bible to learn about God, for no body of people holds the Bible in greater reverence (said Mr Eddison). It was in the Bible that Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, discerned the truths she afterwards set out in the Christian Science textbook, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, and her followers find that the Bible grows more and more important to them in their daily lives as they study its pages in the light thrown upon them by Christian Science. As a result of her deep and persistent study of the Scriptures and of her spiritual inspiration Mrs Eddy was able to answer the question, “What is God?” in the Christian Science textbook as follows: “God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love” (Science and Health, p. 465). This, then, is the God whom Christian Science enables us to know and understand, and to find “forever near,” because, being infinite, He is ever present. The way in which Christian Science enables us to know God is by helping us to understand more intelligently the life and work of Christ Jesus.

Christian Science explains that there is a distinction between “Jesus” and “Christ”: the term “Christ” is not merely a synonym for “Jesus.” The human Jesus was the best and greatest man that ever lived. His example remains forever as the standard for Christian living. He is the Way-shower, in whose footsteps Christian Scientists endeavour humbly to follow. It is impossible to exaggerate the debt which the world owes to the Founder of Christianity. He went about doing good—he healed the sick, fed the hungry, raised the dead. What was it that enabled him to do all this? Christian Science teaches that it was the Christ, Truth, which Jesus understood in fullest measure. Jesus, as Mrs Eddy has pointed out, is a human name which‘the Master shared with others of his race; Christ, on the other hand, is a divine title which refers to the spirituality expressed throughout his life and teaching. In Science and Health (p. 583) may be found this definition of Christ: “The divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error." Our Master said, “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh (that is, matter) profiteth nothing.” When he healed a woman who is described as having been bowed together for 18 years, he said that Satan, the devil, had bound her—and elsewhere he said of the devil, or evil, that “he was a. murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.” That which has no truth in it cannot be real. Christian Science therefore teaches that evil and all its manifestations are untrue, unreal; and the destruction by Christ Jesus of sin, disease, death—all manifestations of evil—confirms that conclusion.

We read in the book of Revelation, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” The Christ, Truth, is knocking today at the portal of human hearts and minds in the teachings of Christian Science. A study of the Bible in the light of Mrs Eddy’s works brings Christ to the human understanding; it teaches us that God is Spirit, Mind, Life, Truth and Love; it shows us man reflecting the perfection of his creator. Thus our concept of ourselves and of our fellow man is spiritualized and purified

through repentance, or change of thought, and through prayer. In this way, and by these means, Christian Science offers to all mankind health of mind and health of body, peace, freedom, strength, happiness—salvation, in the words of our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, in her “Miscellaneous Writings” (p. 154): “Abide in His (God’s) word, and it shall abide in you; and the healing Christ will again be made manifest in the flesh—understood and glorified.”