BELIEVING A LIE | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 17, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 23.

BELIEVING A LIE.

IN theory, the teachers of "Christian Science" claim that evil has no real existence, but is wholly imaginary. So of physical evil; so of moral evil. Hence, in point of fact, there is no such thing as physical disease; and hence also, there is no such thing as moral disease. Sickness exists only in the imagination; sin exists only in the imagination; hence there is no sickness, and there is no sin, provided you will believe that there is not. This doctrine naturally leads up to the desperate venture of believing a lie until you imagine a lie to be the truth. An exchange well says: "If you eliminate sin and its consequences from your creed, you eliminate all the vital, spiritual forces which are organized for the destruction of evil and the overthrow of sin. God is not fighting a shadow in the stupendous work of human redemption. If there is no sin, then there is no salvation; if no ruin, no redemption. The next step is easy and logical—if there is no sin there is no Saviour—Christ could not and did not make an atonement for sin; there can be no remedy for an evil which does not exist. Follow the system a little further and you will find that it rejects the church established by Christ, and the ordinances which he committed to it—baptism and the Lord's Supper. What then?—They surrender the God-appointed instrumentalities for the evangelization of the world, and band them together under the leadership of Mrs. Eddy, whom they believe to be inspired, and in whose teachings they believe Christ has come again. Why call a system Christian which denies the existence of those things which make a conception of Christianity impossible, and which eliminates all the divinely-appointed appliances for its triumph? As a system of religion it is false, pernicious, dangerous, and antichristian."—Good Way.