I never knew a person who knowingly indulged evil,
to be grateful; to understand me, or himself. He must
first see himself and the hallucination of sin; then he [5]
must repent, and love good in order to understand God.
The sinner and the sin are the twain that are one flesh—
but which God hath not joined together.
[pg 095]
Chapter IV. Addresses.
Christian Science In Tremont Temple.
From the platform of the Monday lectureship in [2]
Tremont Temple, on Monday, March 16, 1885, as
will be seen by what follows. Reverend Mary Baker G.
Eddy was presented to Mr. Cook's audience, and allowed [5]
ten minutes in which to reply to his public letter con-
demning her doctrines; which reply was taken in full by
a shorthand reporter who was present, and is transcribed
below.
Mrs. Eddy responding, said:—[10]
As the time so kindly allotted me is insufficient for
even a synopsis of Christian Science, I shall confine my-
self to questions and answers.
Am I a spiritualist?
I am not, and never was. I understand the impossi- [15]
bility of intercommunion between the so-called dead and
living. There have always attended my life phenomena
of an uncommon order, which spiritualists have mis-
called mediumship; but I clearly understand that no
human agencies were employed—that the divine Mind [20]
reveals itself to humanity through spiritual law. And
to such as are “waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption
of our body,” Christian Science reveals the in-
[pg 096]
finitude of divinity and the way of man's salvation from [1]
sickness and death, as wrought out by Jesus, who robbed
the grave of victory and death of its sting. I understand
that God is an ever-present help in all times of trouble—
have found Him so; and would have no other gods, no [5]
remedies in drugs, no material medicine.
Do I believe in a personal God?
I believe in God as the Supreme Being. I know not
what the person of omnipotence and omnipresence is,
or what the infinite includes; therefore, I worship that [10]
of which I can conceive, first, as a loving Father and
Mother; then, as thought ascends the scale of being to
diviner consciousness, God becomes to me, as to the
apostle who declared it, “God is Love,”—divine Prin-
ciple—which I worship; and “after the manner of my [15]
fathers, so worship I God.”
Do I believe in the atonement of Christ?
I do; and this atonement becomes more to me since
it includes man's redemption from sickness as well as
from sin. I reverence and adore Christ as never before. [20]
It brings to my sense, and to the sense of all who enter-
tain this understanding of the Science of God, a whole
salvation.
How is the healing done in Christian Science?
This answer includes too much to give you any con- [25]
clusive idea in a brief explanation. I can name some
means by which it is not done.
It is not one mind acting upon another mind; it is
not the transference of human images of thought to
other minds; it is not supported by the evidence before [30]
the personal senses—Science contradicts this evidence;
it is not of the flesh, but of the Spirit. It is Christ come
[pg 097]
to destroy the power of the flesh; it is Truth over error; [1]
that understood, gives man ability to rise above the evi-
dence of the senses, take hold of the eternal energies of
Truth, and destroy mortal discord with immortal har-
mony—the grand verities of being. It is not one mortal [5]
thought transmitted to another's thought from the human
mind that holds within itself all evil.
Our Master said of one of his students, “He is a devil,”
and repudiated the idea of casting out devils through
Beelzebub. Erring human mind is by no means a de- [10]
sirable or efficacious healer. Such suppositional healing
I deprecate. It is in no way allied to divine power. All
human control is animal magnetism, more despicable
than all other methods of treating disease.
Christian Science is not a remedy of faith alone, but [15]
combines faith with understanding, through which we
may touch the hem of His garment; and know that om-
nipotence has all power. “I am the Lord, and there is
none else, there is no God beside me.”
Is there a personal man? [20]
The Scriptures inform us that man was made in the
image and likeness of God. I commend the Icelandic
translation: “He created man in the image and likeness
of Mind, in the image and likeness of Mind created
He him.” To my sense, we have not seen all of man; [25]
he is more than personal sense can cognize, who is the
image and likeness of the infinite. I have not seen a
perfect man in mind or body—and such must be the
personality of him who is the true likeness: the lost
image is not this personality, and corporeal man is this [30]
lost image; hence, it