Exposition of Christian Science

BY

ΤΗ

The Reverend O. P. GIFFORD. D.D.

'HE purpose of this paper is to give an exposition of Christian Science. An exposition is neither an attack nor a defence but is an attempt to state the subject so clearly that each may attack or defend for himself. Christian Science is a fact to be faced, a force to be opposed or profited by. It is a fact and a force in the religious and the medical world, dealing with the souls and bodies of men. It is a philosophy dealing with God, man and the universe. It is an art healing the body, calming the mind, quieting the soul. It claims to be a revelation. final revelation of the absolute Principle of Scientific Mind-healing." As a revelation Christian Science affirms the being and unfolds the nature of God, as a philosophy it formulates this revelation in human phrases, weaving the threads of revelation into a web of complete thought, as an art it applies the truth revealed and thought through to the regulation of life.

A

Christian Science accepts the Scriptures as the Word of God, a revelation made in times past through holy men by the Holy Ghost; it supplements this revelation with another given through Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, bound in a volume known as "Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures." This volume contains the revelation, presents the philosophy, and teaches the art.

GOD." God is Spirit, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Infinite, Eternal, Self-existent, Life, Truth, Love, Being, All-in-All.”

Christian Science summarizes its creed in four propositions: "I. God is All in all. II. God is good. God is mind. III. God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter. IV. Life, God, omnipotent Good, deny death, evil, sin, disease.-Disease, sin, evil, death, deny Good, omnipotent God, Life. These may be read forward or backward, they are self-evident propositions."

God is not a person. Personality implies limitation, there may be many persons in one room, there is but one God, therefore He cannot be a person. If it be true that personality implies limitation, and it be granted that God is unlimited then it follows that He is not a person. He may transcend personality as a person transcends a thing; God cannot be less than man, He may be, and is, more than man. In man personality is limited, if we know all that is to be known of personality by knowing man, then it follows that God is not a person. Christian Science claims to be a revelation, if it is what it claims to be, we must accept its teaching concerning God. Though not a person He wills, loves, plans, and these in our thought are the essence of personality.

When it is said that "Matter is nothing, Nothing is matter, the revelation is given from God's point of view. To man Matter is much, it limits us on every side, to God it has no existence, hence it follows that all belonging to Matter, inhering in Matter is also non-existent. Physical Science is teaching (speculatively) that "Matter is a mode of motion". The atom has never been found outside the mind of man, it is a subject of thought, it lies below the horizon of sense. Christian Science teaches that Matter has no existence outside the human mind; as the human breath turns to white mist on a frosty morning and then disappears, so matter is but the breath of mortal mind, has no reality to God. If that be true then it follows that disease in Matter has no real existence, or existence to God, and what is unreal to God is in its essence unreal, for He is the only Reality.

MAN.-Man is God's Idea, expression, reflection, image, likeness. He is as eternal as God is. So long as God thought Man was, for Man is God's thought. God could not be and not think, His thoughts are as real as He is, as eternal, they are the expression of His essence, the image of His being. A Man standing before a mirror sees his own image, it has no being except as he is, it moves toward or away from him as he

moves.

If it could mirror his mind it would think his

thoughts. If the man and the mirror and the light were eternal, and the three were externally related the image would be as eternal. God is eternal Being, Man is His eternal image. God is conscious only of Himself and His Image. He is, He is Light, He is His own mirror, and Man is His eternal reflection. Before Man knew time, before time was, Man reflected God, thought His thoughts, lived His life, had only God-consciousness. He came to self-consciousness, how or why we do not know. The writer of the book of Genesis tells the fact in parable form. Man asserted his own will, separated himself from God in thought and purpose. Lost God-consciousness. Thought of himself as an independent being, became selfcentered. From being a planet with God as the centre, he became (in his own thought) a sun and evolved a universe to circle about himself. This dream, so real to him, has no reality to God. God sees only His own image and likeness, man still revolves about God, this man-made universe has no reality to God. He sees only truth, and this human attitude of mind is false, He sees only the real, and man's dream is unreal. Man is like one in a dream, when he awakes in God's likeness he will be satisfied, but he is in God's likeness all the time, only not awake to it, hence he is dissatisfied. He is hewing out broken cisterns but the water of Life still flows under the throne. God sees only the river, to Him the cisterns have no existence. The vagaries of the insane are unreal to the sane, sin is insanity, a mental delusion, real to the man who has sinned but unreal to the sinless God.

Having asserted himself, Man makes a new world to fit his new mental state. The human body is real to Man, but unreal to God. It is a burden and a barrier to and between men. We know only so many of each other's thoughts as each sees fit to express; God knows the thoughts and intents of the heart, if the body were as real to Him as it is to us it would be a veil between Him and the soul of man, but it has no place in God's world. Created light casts shadows when it strikes

bodies, the uncreated God-Light casts no shadows, shines through matter directly, because to God there is no matter, "Matter is nothing."

Buildings, books, machines, pictures, all that make what we call civilization, are the expression of human thought. Matter is our alphabet, civilization is our literature. None of these things were before man, none of them will last long after man passes from the stage of action. Men think, and thoughts embodied in matter is civilization, laws, institutions, governments are but human thoughts, they come and go like seaborn clouds. But Matter itself, the alphabet, the language is also a product of human thought. Thought wedded to language makes literature, but thought and language are from the mind of man, language is the product of thought. Civilization is thought wedded to matter, but matter is also the product of human thought. There was no matter before man thought it, there will be no matter when man ceases to think it, it has no reality to God. As matter is real God is unreal, as God becomes real, matter becomes unreal. Christ so mastered matter that at the end it had no reality to him. "He emptied Himself, made Himself of no reputation, took upon Himself the form of a servant," then asserted Himself, and mastered His man-made environment, putting sin to death in the flesh, to teach us the reality of God and the unreality of matter. To God matter is as unreal as it became to Christ when He disappeared from man in earth-born clouds. Christian Science teaches that God is the only reality, Man as God's Idea shares that reality, but matter and all it means to us, is unreal to God, for He is Spirit, and only the Spiritual is the real.

SIN.-Sin is unreal to God. It is a mode of human thought. It is a shadow cast by man when he stands with his back to God. It disappears when he changes his mind, or repents. Sin is not a reality, it is simply a mood of mind, a form of thought, a set of will, it disappears when a man faces God and becomes, consciously, God's Idea again.

SICKNESS. There is no sickness, to God. Thoughts away