The Christian Science Journal

“ The question respecting the relations of Christianity and Science to each other is now exciting a very general and intense interest. The Bible was written during a period in the history of the world when true science was almost unknown. ”

“ What are the fruits of this Gospel when it is received into the heart of an individual? It will make a bad man good, and a good man better; it increases their light, knowledge, and intelligence, and enables them to grow in grace and in the knowledge of the truth, as the Savior did, until they understand men and things, the world and its doctrines, whether Christian, heathen or Pagan, and will ultimately lead them to a knowledge of things in heaven, on the earth or under the earth. ”

“ For, if this were so, if science spoke true that, the miracle of life set a-going, there had been no further intervention on the part of the Creator, then the very head-and-corner stone of the Christian faith, the Bible itself, was shaken. ”

“ Christianity reveals God as ever-present Truth and Love, to be utilized in healing the sick, in casting out error, in raising the dead.
Christian Science gives vitality to religion, which is no longer buried in materiality. It raises men from a material sense into the spiritual understanding and scientific demonstration of God. ”

“ Nor, I have urged, can it be reasonably said that the Christian doctrine of sin and of the Fall is bound up with one particular interpretation of Genesis iii. All, then, that we must admit in the way of collision between Christianity and science is, on the one hand, that Christianity is not intended to teach men science, and that when there is any great advance in human knowledge it takes a little while for Christianity to extricate itself from the meshes of the language and ideas belonging to one stage of scientific knowledge, and to assimilate the terms and ideas of the new. ”

“ Herein Christian Science is in a line with natural science. Christian Science devoutly believes the wonderful works performed by Jesus, but affirms that his so-called miracles were in accord with the highest law; that they proceeded from the divine Principle of him, which is the Christ or anointed imperial humanity. Miracles are impossible in Science. The highest manifestation of Life or Truth is divine—not supernatural or preternatural, since Science is nature explicated. ”

“ It is wisdom about God for those who believe that he is all things and in all, and wisdom about nature for the man who accepts the statement found in the Christian Bible that God cannot be measured or discovered, and that darkness is around his pavilion. Although it contains by derivation the name God and thus may seem at first sight to embrace religion alone, it does not neglect science, for it is the science of sciences and therefore has been called the wisdom religion. ”

“ A little understanding of Christian Science proves the truth of all that I have said of it. Because you cannot walk the wave and raise the dead, you have no right to question the ability of Divine Science. Be thankful that Jesus did this, who was its true demonstrator, and left his example for us. We should attempt no more than we understand, and prove our faith by our works. ”

“ CHAPTER XVII. THAT EDDYFYING CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. This season there broke out in our community, as elsewhere, what has always appeared to me, to be a distemper, misnamed by its crafty creator, "Christian Science." Unchristian scienceless would be a more appropriate name, as the so-called divine revelation was made to its Eddyfying high priestess about 1800 years after the sublime career of Christ was ended, and its preposterous claims antagonize every principle of modern science. ”

“ Truth comes from a deep sincerity that must always characterize heroic hearts; it is the better side of man's nature developing itself.
As Christian Scientists you seek to define God to your own consciousness by feeling and applying the nature and practical possibilities of divine Love: to gain the absolute and supreme certainty that Christianity is now what Christ Jesus taught and demonstrated — health, holiness, immortality. The highest spiritual Christianity in individual lives is indispensable to the acquiring of greater power in the perfected Science of healing all manner of diseases. ”

“ This does not mean that natural [Pg 98] knowledge or culture is to be despised or avoided as evil, but that the two kinds of knowledge should be carefully distinguished. The Christian Church has at least for the last three hundred years set great store by knowledge and science, but deeper than all this is the spiritual instinct, insight, knowledge, and illumination which constitute the supreme requirement of the true Christian life. We can see this spiritual perception in its various stages in several passages of the New Testament. ”

“ I rejoice in the passionate earnestness with which he lifts the hearts of his readers to ideals which it seems to me—that Christianity which as a living force in the Apostles' days turned the world upside down, that is right side up, with its face toward heaven and God—alone can realize for man. ”

“ Whether, then, there be a personal God or not, whether our aspirations after immortality are well founded or not, yet the Bible is such an expression of the awe, and reverence, and yearning of the human soul in the presence of the facts of life and death, and of the power and mystery of the world, as pales all other expression of these things; not a cool, calculated expression of it, but an emotional, religious expression of it. To demonstrate its divergence from science is nothing; from the religious aspirations of the soul it does not diverge. ”

“ While I am not a Christian Scientist yet I am interested in the work and I have always found there a cordial welcome and an atmosphere of refinement and culture, and when I sought information on the teachings of Christian Science, it was given so tactfully and with such convincing logic that it has caused me to look upon Christian Science in a most favorable light. ”

“ From one conference they emerged with the teaching that true religion was man's heartfelt loyalty to his highest and truest convictions.
Jesus warned his believers that, if their religious longings were only material, increasing knowledge of nature would, by progressive displacement of the supposed supernatural origin of things, ultimately deprive them of their faith in God. But that, if their religion were spiritual, never could the progress of physical science disturb their faith in eternal realities and divine values. ”

“ Christian Science, then, is a cult unusually powerful and far reaching in its influence, and it is therefore entitled to and should invite correspondingly careful investigation of all its various aspects. ”

“ If God had been the author of the Christian religion, it would, like all his works, have been so arranged, and the means so wisely adapted, that the intention or end would be fully answered. But the religion of the Bible, both the Old and New Testament, is a continual trial of experiments on man. ”

“ I ask you now not to forget this notion; for although most philosophers seem either to forget it or to disdain it too much ever to mention it, I believe that we shall have to admit it ourselves in the end as containing an element of truth. The mind-cure gospel thus once more appears to us as having dignity and importance. We have seen it to be a genuine religion, and no mere silly appeal to imagination to cure disease; we have seen its method of experimental verification to be not unlike the method of all science ”

“ Christian Science has proved to be an ever-present help, not only in overcoming physical ailments, but in business and daily life. It has also overcome a great sense of fear. The Bible, which I regarded with suspicion, has become my guide, and Christianity has become a sweet reality, because the Christian Science textbook has indeed been a "Key to the Scriptures" and has breathed through the Gospel pages a sweet sense of harmony. ”

“ What Christianity can do for the world is shown, not by men who have stood on the high places screaming in wrath at the advance of science—not by men who have retreated in terror into the sacred caves and refused to look out upon the universe as it is, but by men who have preached and practised the righteousness of the prophets, and the aspirations of the Psalmist, and the blessed Sermon on the Mount, and "the first great commandment and the second which is like unto it," and St. James's definition of "pure religion and undefiled." ”

“ Our Lord is the crown, nay, the very substance of all Revelation. If He cannot convince the soul, no other can. The believer stakes all faith on His truth; all hope on His power. If the man of Science would learn what it is that makes believers so sure of what they hold, he must study with an open heart the Jesus of the Gospels; if the believer seeks to keep his faith steady in the presence of so many and sometimes so violent storms of disputation, he will read of, ponder on, pray to, the Lord Jesus Christ. ”

“ PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY, UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. The question whether the Christian religion is declining is agitating the public mind in some measure at the present time. This is due to the many changes that are taking place in the forms of religion, the types of doctrine, and the methods of action in the numerous religious organizations which bear the name of Jesus Christ. Are these changes symptoms of disease and decay in the Christian religion, or are they evidences of renewed vitality and enlargement by growth? ”

“ Theology is a science, and is subject to the imperfections to which all other sciences are liable. It stands to the facts of Christianity in the same relation as philosophy and physical science stand to the works of nature. In the one the human intellect investigates the divine revelation contained in the works of nature, and endeavours to systematise its truths: in the other it does the same with respect to the divine revelation which in accordance with the assertions of the New Testament has been made in the person of Jesus Christ. ”

“ From all these efforts to reconstruct systematic theology with its appropriations of philosophy and science, groups of Christians turn to the inner life and seek in its realities to find the confirmation of their faith. ”

“ I have heard men preach upon the divinity of Christ, and exhaust all the wisdom they possessed. All Scripturalists, and approved theologians who were considered exemplary for piety and education, have undertaken to expound on this subject, in every age of the Christian era ”

“ Christianity, on the contrary, existed first, and the Scripture was the organ through which it presented itself to, and propagated itself among men. That which existed before Scripture was the complex of saving facts, whose centre is Christ and the Christian life. The function of the Scripture, therefore, was to be the medium of making known the person and work of Christ, where the living message could not reach. ”

“ Christianity is a planetary and human religion: being the revelation of those aspects of Godhead which are most intelligible and helpful to us in our present stage of development. But it is more than a revelation, it is a manifestation of some of the attributes of Godhead in the form of humanity. ”

“ The Bible is a book of experimental religion, in which, the converse of God with his people is depicted in all its stages, up to the full and abiding manifestation of saving love in the person of Jesus Christ. God has no message to the believing soul which the Bible does not set forth, and set forth not in bare formulas, but in living and experimental form, by giving the actual history of the need which the message supplies, and by showing how the holy men of old received the message, as a light to their own darkness, a comfort and a stay to their own souls. ”

“ Can we not see with restful hearts that all for which we value it is safe from assault; that we never can doubt that it has come to us from God.
With this confidence in our foundations we shall study peacefully and with interest all new knowledge on the Bible. Instead of fearing a conflict of Science and Scripture we shall learn to read our Bible more wisely. For example, we shall read the Creation story not as a scientific treatise but as a simple religious primer for an ancient child race three or four thousand years ago to teach them first lessons about God. ”

“ In summing up the whole subject, we see that in this field, as in so many others, the triumph of scientific thought has gradually done much to evolve in the world not only a theology but also a religious spirit more and more worthy of the goodness of God and of the destiny of man. ”

“ Your Bible and your textbook, pastor and ethical tenets, do not mislead the seeker after Truth. These unpretentious preachers cloud not the spiritual meaning of Holy Writ by material interpretations, nor lose the invincible process and purity of Christianity whereby the sick are healed and sinners saved. The Science of Christianity is not generally understood, but it hastens hourly to this end. This Science is the essence of religion, distilled in the laboratory of infinite Love and prepared for all peoples. ”

“ I assume also that Christianity has elements which are not to be found in any other religion,--such as original teachings, divine revelations, and sublime truths. I know it is the fashion with many thinkers to maintain that improvements on the Christian system are both possible and probable, and that there is scarcely a truth which Christ and his apostles declared which cannot be found in some other ancient religion, when divested of the errors there incorporated with it. ”