Christian Science Folly and the Dakota Child Incident
For some valuable suggestions, and practical instruction on the Sabbath-school lesson this week, read the article beginning on the first page, by Sister White. “In Winchester, Va., a man was tried for murder and convicted. His counsel took the case up on a number of points, all of which the Circuit Judge overruled except the one that, in making up the record, an extra initial had been inserted in the man’s name, and he was granted a new trial!” It is just such decisions as this that render so many trials mere farces and incite men to more violence. THE following, clipped from the Oakland Enquirer, illustrates the folly of that system of fatuity which has duped so many of the credulous, and for which Mrs. Eddy, of Boston, is largely responsible. But perhaps she is no more so than some of her learned dupes:— “Up in Dakota some Christian science people tried for two days to raise a child from the dead. But they did not succeed. They may convince themselves that sickness is all in the mind, but death is a reality which no sophistry can get over.” The fact of the case is, there is nothing Christian about it but the name. It is antichrist, and such things do more injury to true Christianity than all the infidelity in the land. Like all error, it has a minimum of truth and a maximum of falsehood. It has taken for its name two words,—Christian, from Christ, and science, which means knowledge; but it has neither Christianity nor knowledge. It has borrowed the livery of Heaven the better to serve the devil. A READER OF THE SIGNS asks for an explanation of Heb. 7: 12, which reads thus: “For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also in the law.” It is not difficult to understand this, if one considers what is the subject of the apostle’s discourse, namely the priesthood of Christ. The entire book of Hebrews is an exaltation of Christ, showing how he as Creator is superior to the angels, to Moses and to the house of Levi. The sixth chapter closes with the statement that Jesus is a high priest after the order of Melchizedek; but that is a priesthood of which Moses said nothing. Among the Jews it was death for any body not of the house of Aaron of the tribe of Levi, to come near the sanctuary to minister. Now if Christ is to be priest for that same people, it is evident, as the verse says, that there must be a change in the law—of the priesthood. In proof of this, he continues:— “For he of whom these things are spoken pertaineth to another tribe of which no man gave attendance at the altar. For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Judah; of which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priesthood.” Heb. 7: 13, 14. To apply the text to the law of ten commandments, as some do, is to do violence to it, and to go contrary to all reason. To say that the law concerning which they ministered, should be changed because a new order of priesthood was instituted, would be no more in accordance with reason than to say that it should be changed every time a new priest came into office. But it is most natural and necessary that if a new order of priesthood was to be instituted, and a priest taken from another tribe, there must be a change in the law which made it a capital offense for one of that other tribe to minister at the altar.