“CHRISTIAN SCIENCE:” ARE ITS DOCTRINES TRUTH OR ERROR?
By George I. Butler
The Belief of Mrs. Eddy and Her Disciples, in the Bible.
In the previous article we briefly noticed the rapid progress Christian Science has been making since its rise, about one fourth of a century ago. It is indeed making quite a stir in the world already. Reports come from various quarters that many intelligent people are accepting it. Mrs. Eddy claims it is yet to do great things, even to absorb the great mass of professed Christians. One reason why it is so readily received is because it claims to be Christian, and to accept the Bible as the word of God. Christian Scientists claim to have more faith in the Bible and to read it more than any other people. Mrs. Eddy says (“Science and Health,” page 20): “The Bible has been my only text-book. I have no other guide in the ‘strait and narrow way’ of this science.” She claims to have made it her constant study. In their regular religious services on Sundays, instead of sermons, they have readings from the Scriptures and from selections from “Science and Health.” These readings are provided beforehand in their Christian Science Quarterly for all their churches. At the close of this exercise—or the readings from the texts of Scripture and from their standard book of authority, “Science of Health,” which they call “our sermon”—they have an experience meeting in which various persons tell what great things Christian Science has done for them. Such meetings are largely attended, far more so than ordinary preaching services in the churches. It will be seen, then, that Mrs. Eddy and her people present before others high pretensions to faith in the Scriptures. These claims have no doubt been one of the reasons why so many are drawn toward this new religious cult. They suppose it to be derived from the Scriptures. Let us now examine this claim somewhat carefully, and see if it is founded on truth. The book of standard authority among them—Mrs. Eddy’s volume, “Science and Health”—purports to have a “key to the Scriptures.” This portion of her book begins on page 495, and embraces seventy-four pages. In this space she takes up the larger portion of the first chapters of the book of Genesis, giving what she supposes to be the meaning of the same. In the latter part of the “key,” beginning with Revelation 12, she quotes a very small portion of the remaining chapters of that book, giving her version of these scriptures. This comprises her “key to the Scriptures.” This “key” is a very weak imitation of the work of the famous Emmanuel Swedenborg, who lived in the seventeenth century. He claimed to be a true prophet of the Lord, who could converse with angels or spirits at his pleasure. His leading doctrine was that the Bible as now written could not be understood; that its teachings were utterly unreliable in the literal sense of the words of the text; that in order to be understood, it was necessary to have the “key” which had been lost in the long, dark ages of the past; but that God had very mercifully revealed this lost “key” to him, Emmanuel Swedenborg. He then very graciously proceeded to write out the meaning of practically the whole Bible in large Latin books, so that we poor creatures could comprehend the real meaning. Suffice it to say, no mortal could possibly have guessed from the reading of the text, without this “key,” what its meaning was had he not graciously told us. Among the various things he told us the Scriptures meant to teach us were these: that the last judgment took place about the middle of the seventeenth century, when the great masses of the departed spirits of the dead, which had been accumulating for long ages, and were undisposed of, were finally relegated to their various heavens and hells, and thus disposed of in an orderly manner; so that after that great judgment day, as they dropped out of their human sphere, they could go at once to the proper divisions of heavens and hells, which were ready to receive them. He was a great believer in disembodied spirits. He also kindly told us in excellent Latin that Christ would never come the second time; that the account of the New Jerusalem was a mere allegory, or figure of speech; that there would never be a resurrection of the body, etc. Emmanuel Swedenborg was indeed the great prophet of all these spiritualizing systems of religious teaching which have sprung up in such numbers since, denying the literal sense of the Scriptures, and Christ’s personal coming, the resurrection of the dead, the final judgment, and the glorious and literal future kingdom of God, where the saved of all ages shall be gathered at the personal advent of Christ our Lord, to reign with Him for evermore. Swedenborg was indeed a wonderful man. All the rest are but weak imitations. To give the reader a little idea of this wonderful “key” with which Mrs. Eddy unfolds the account of creation, I will give a few specimens verbatim:— “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Gen. 1:1. She says: “This creation consists of the unfolding of spiritual ideas and their identities which are embraced in the infinite Mind and forever reflected. These ideas range from the infinitesimal to immensity, and the highest ideas are the sons and daughters of God.” “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Gen. 1:2. Now, dear reader, notice what Mrs. Eddy tells us this language means: “The divine principle and idea constitute spiritual harmony,—heaven and eternity. In this universe of truth, matter is unknown. . . . Christian Science, the Word of God, saith to the darkness upon the face of error, ‘God is all-in-all,’ and light appears in proportion as this is understood. It reveals the eternal wonder,—that infinite space is peopled with God’s ideas, reflecting Him in countless spiritual forms.” Who in his senses would ever dream that this explanation (?) had any connection whatever with the text quoted? When I tell the reader that Mrs. Eddy everywhere teaches that matter is a complete nonentity, does not exist at all, never did and never will; that it is wholly an illusion and nonexistent; while spirit, without body, without parts, that which never can be known by any of our senses, is the42only real substance in existence, he will begin to get a little glimpse of her theology. One more quotation: “And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” Mrs. Eddy interprets again: “Understanding is the spiritual firmament whereby human conception distinguishes between truth and error. The divine Mind, not matter, creates all identities; and they are forms of thoughts, the ideas of spirit, present to mind only, never to mindless matter.” And so she goes on, page after page, taking the simple, sublime statements of Holy Writ in which the great steps in creation are portrayed so simply that a child may be enlightened by reading them, and perverts them into her mystical, visionary, foggy, roily sophisms that nobody can comprehend, because there is nothing real about them. Thus she seeks to obscure the true sense, literal and clear, into the same kind of nonsense Spiritualism had brought out before her. I have not found so much as one clear, sensible comment in all her pages devoted to the creation and the early history of man. She claims to believe the account of creation as she explains and spiritualizes it away, in Genesis 1. But when she comes to the second chapter, where the creation of the first pair, their temptation, fall, and reception of the penalty are more fully given, the account is so diametrically contrary to her theories and teachings that she is forced to cast it aside altogether as entirely unworthy of belief. At the close of chapter 1, page 374, she states: “The continued account [in chapter 2] is mortal and material.” “Now the opposite error, a material view, is to be set forth. The second chapter of Genesis contains a statement of this material view of God and the universe, which is the exact opposite of scientific truth. The history of error or matter, if veritable, would set aside the omnipotence of spirit; but it is the false history in contradistinction to the true.” She has page after page reiterating her statement that this portion of the Bible is utterly untrue. The making of man from the earthly elements, material and corporeal, his testing by the eating of the fruit of the forbidden tree, his temptation by that “old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan,” his condemnation because of disobedience, and the final sentence of death for sin, is over and over utterly denied. This is a clear and forcible presentation as an illustration of her faith in the Scriptures, characteristic of her whole treatment of the Bible throughout her book. What portion of it she can partially quote,—paraphrase—frequently giving a meaning the very opposite of the plain sense, sometimes misquoting, spiritualizing it away, many times perverting it,—these portions she uses, seeking to enforce her “discoveries” and peculiar doctrines. In all my reading, I have never seen a stronger effort made to mystify, mangle, pervert, and misconstrue Scripture than she makes all through her book. It is no wonder she had to study long and hard to erect such a structure as she has brought out. She utterly rejects the idea of Christ’s personal return to this earth, the resurrection of the dead, a future judgment, and a glorified home in heaven. She denies the existence of good or bad angels. These, and many other plain doctrines of the Bible are utterly discarded from her system. Believers of Christian Science take her book, “Science and Health,” not only as equal to the Bible as a book of authority, but really superior to it. Their belief in the Bible is the acceptance of it in the sense Mrs. Eddy holds it in her doctrinal book, “Science and Health.” Any portion of the Bible in conflict with her views has about as much effect in changing their minds as the pouring of water upon a duck’s back would—it makes no impression. Such belief in the Bible is really no belief at all. It is giving second place to that great storehouse of revealed truth, and putting Mrs. Eddy’s mysticisms, mind wanderings, foggy speculations, and cloudy imaginations in the first place. In our next we will present evidences to prove these statements true.