C U L T S S Part 5
Christian Science
B y Louis T . Talbot wholly spiritual one must be sinless. He becomes spiritual only as he reaches perfection. The murderer, though slain in the act, does not thereby forsake sin. He is no more spiritual for believing his body dead and learning that his cruel mind is not dead. His thoughts are no purer until he disarms evil with good (S & H, p. 43, 28th ed.). Evidently this purification goes on after death! Of the raising of Lazarus, she had this to say: “ He (Jesus) restored Laz arus by the understanding that he never died, not by an admission that his body had died and then lived again . . .” and then she goes on to say that you can have the same experience, “ when you can waken yourself or others out of the belief that all must die, you can then exer cise Jesus’ spiritual power to repro duce the presence of those who you say have died” (S & H, 74th ed., p. 241). E vidently no Christian Scientist has ever awakened himself out of this belief, for this is the place where they all fail. They die just like everyone else, and lie in their narrow graves. Even Mrs. Eddy. On December 3, 1910, the medical examiner whom the law required to be present made out her death certificate to read: “ Natural causes — probably pneumonia,” and she was buried, and her tomb was carefully guarded for some time be cause many of her followers thought surely she who had taught that there was no death, that man was incapa ble of it, would burst the bands of death and appear among them again. But they were bitterly disappointed, and no doubt many of them lost faith in the system as a result of her death. A former Christian Scientist, who before his conversion was a reader in that organization, once said in my hearing that when Mrs. Eddy was
I t is only a step from the denial of the reality of sin and sickness to a denial of the actuality of death. I quote again that threefold statement of Mrs. Eddy’s work: “Man is i n c ap a b l e of sin, sickness and death” (5 & H, p. 459, 74th ed.). Mrs. Eddy may delude her follow ers into believing they are not sick or sinful, but she had no success in the realm of death. This alone proves the whole system to be false. It col lapses like a house of cards when you reach this point. But the amazing thing is that Christian Scientists, even while burying their dead, chant this refrain from Science and Health, “ Death will be found . . . to be a mortal dream” (S & H, p. 347, 74th ed.). God’s Word does not call death a dream: “ But we see Jesus . . . for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man” (Heb. 2:9). Jesus Himself said: “ I am he that liveth and was dead; and behold, I am alive for evermore” (Rev. 1:18). She did not believe in birthdays: “Never record ages. Timetables of birth and death are so many con spiracies against manhood and wom anhood” (S <& H , p. 142, 74th ed.). “Man is neither young nor old; he has neither birth nor death.” (S & H, p. 140, 74th ed.). Mrs. Eddy states: “ There is no reality in death” (5 & H, p. 424, 74th ed.). “ Death can be nowhere; be cause there is no place left for it” ( Unity of Good, p. 42) and “ The king of terrors . . . but a mortal be lief or error . . . what appears to the senses to be death is but mortal il lusion” (p. 185, same volume). She taught another of the tenets of Hinduism, in addition to the nega tion theory, namely, a progressive purging of the soul after death: “ Each sin . . . ceases not with the dissolution of matter . . . To be
buried a bell attached to her tomb was electrically wired to the Mother Church in Boston so that when she arose, the bell would ring. Well, she must be the one for whom the bell does not toll, because it has not happened yet! Nor will it. The Lord Jesus Christ will raise the dead in person, when He comes. Although Mrs. Eddy had written: “We can be come conscious, here and now, of a cessation of death” (S <&H, p. 573), she could not make good her claims. What did Mrs. Eddy believe about the resurrection of the Son of God? She states it in Science and Health, p. 44, lines 5 ,6 and 7: “ The lonely precincts of the tomb gave Jesus a refuge from his foes, a place in which to solve the great problem of being. . . . He met and mastered on the basis of Christian Science the power of Mind over matter, all the claims of medicine, surgery and hygiene.” She attempted to explain the resur rection this way: “ To accommodate himself to the immature idea of his power . . . Jesus called the body . . . flesh and bones.’ To show that the Substance of himself was Spirit, and the body no more perfect because of death, and no less material until the Ascension made it so, he waited until the mortal sense, or flesh, had risen above all earthly yearnings, and re linquished the belief of substance- matter, and the Ego became one with the Father” (S & H, p. 53, 28th ed.). I am sure any thinking person will agree with me that nothing could be more meaningless than that state ment. N othing, on the other hand, Luke 24:36-43: “ And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them,
could be clearer than the account of the appearance of Jesus to His disciples after His resurrection as given
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THE KING'S BUSINESS
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