A New Brand of Christian Science.
By Editor
A magazine has just been started entitled "Newlife Monthly." It claims to be the "official organ of the 'Newlife Movement,'" and it further claims that this movement is "the true science of God." The doctrines of the "movement" are set forth in the magazine in a lot of paragraphs, a few samples of which are the following: The Newlife Science teaches that God is love and All in All, Omnipotent Omnipresent and Omniscient to all Eternity. The Newlife Science teaches that sin, sickness, and disease is err and can and will be overcome here and now. The Newlife Science teaches that death is a stupid blunder and not a necessity of our lives, and that in time it will be considered stupid to die. It would seem that the "Mother Science Church" was doing all the teaching like the foregoing that is needed, and hence "The Movement" ought to take a sober second thought and consider itself superfluous. It is very catchy to many people to hear the claim made that men may get hold of some kind of doctrine that will fix them over in some way so that they need not die. It sounds almost amusing as well as delusively satisfying to hear the statement made that "death is a stupid blunder and not a necessity of our lives." But God has said in His Word that "the wages of sin is death," and furthermore He told our first parents in the Garden of Eden that "in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." And this fact is affirmed in the New Testament by the statement, "In Adam all die;" and consequently it is said again, "It is appointed unto men once to die." It is clearly a part of God's general plan in dealing with sin to require all men to die. There are a few exceptions to the rule, but they appear as exceptions, and not as something that all may attain to. Mrs. Eddy has tried to get her followers to the place where none of them would die. Thousands of them honestly thought that Mrs. Eddy herself would live forever. But she has died, and all her followers are compelled to acknowledge the sober fact. In like manner all the Newlife Movement people will die, despite all their high-sounding claims to the contrary. God's Word says that "death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." It has ever been true and it will always remain true that God's simple Word is stronger than all the imaginings that men may devise to the contrary. Why will not men believe that Word, and thus save themselves the trouble and disappointment that come from building theories that are contrary to divine law? Most men have learned that it is absurd to try to set aside natural law. It is equally absurd to fly in the face of spiritual law.