Christian Science Beliefs

Lecture by Mr. Kimball, One Of Their Lecturers

MRS. EDDY, DISCOVERER

Of the Science A Tribute to Her as a Mother in Israel

Mr. Charles Kimball, one of the leading Christian Science lecturers, addressed the Christian Scientists and friends in this city Sunday afternoon. He was introduced by Mrs. Knott of Detroit, and there were a number of members present from Wayne, Detroit Toledo and other places.

Mr. Kimball said in part, that for lack of time in which to give a complete exposition of Christian Science, he would endeavor to give some idea of what it is by explaining some of the differences between it and many of the numerous religious beliefs and philosophies as well as the theory and practice of medicine.

We believe God is infinite, eternal, individual, self-existent, omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient, that He is Life, Truth, Love, Good, and that He is sole Creator of and the law and government of all that has actual existence.

In logical and necessary consistency with this we repudiate every assumption that he has created sin, sickness or death, or that He has procured them or that they are any part of His nature, plan or necessity. God is contrary to disease and disease is contrary to God--an abnormal monstrosity of the so called "carnal mind" which is at enmity to and unlike God, who instead of having instituted sickness is the natural healer of the sick.

We believe in the divinity of Christ and accept him as the only Messiah. We are striving to live in imitation of his teaching and works. We differ from others because we do not believe that his work, done according to the will of God, for the salvation of mortals, was mysterious, miraculous, or unnatural. Christian Science teaches that his ministry was by way of object lesson--palpable proof of practical and universal utility. He so understood and stated it accordingly.

We differ concerning the nature of sin and evil. A concensus of opinion on the part of the world is that evil is an entity which includes all of the elements of immortality; that it is as real, actual and eternal as God and destined to exist in perpetual companionship with God, who is declared to be everywhere and to know all the evil there is forever.

Christian Science declares that all evil is temporal and temporary; that it contains the seeds and nature of its own destruction and extinction; that it is unnatural, abnormal, unlawful and unnecessary, and that it can be mastered and legally abolished. All sin and evil is finite and is doomed to utter extermination and is but the paraphernalia of the same carnal mind, or an erroneous, vicious, ignorant and perverted sense of true being. Jesus said, "overcome evil," "I have overcome the world, the flesh and the devil," go thou and do likewise.

A race of people educated to believe that God has procured their inevitable suffering and tragic doom and that evil is not only undestructible, but irresistible, is permeated individually and collectively with fear, dread and alarm, and with perpetual expectation of disaster and this fear constitutes in itself the prolific cause of mental and physical degredation and diseases.

Materia Medica and philology hold that disease is natural and we declare it to be unnatural. The matter physician holds that disease, per se, is incurable and many forms of sickness are inevitably fatal. On the contrary, Christian Science affirms as a primary postulate that there is no such thing as an incurable disease and the practice of this science is verifying this, because through its means practically every known disease has been cured.

Physioligy asserts that the primary cause of disease is to be found in the realm of mindless matter and we know that causation is to be found in the mental realm.

The matter physician admits that the drugging system is defective and that its practice is tentative, experimental, or accidental, and often is by way of expediency, and we hold that Christian Science as the science of healing is demonstrably perfect and that as soon as the practice thereof is fully understood it will abolish disease.

The matter physician regards matter as able to dominate the life and peace of men and liable by its own caprice to make him sick and kill him, whereas we cling to the supremacy of Mind and the law and power of Spirit.

We believe in prayer without ceasing, and in the highest moral and ethical standard of living. We are taught to obey the commandments and the "Sermon on the Mount.' We are striving to abandon sin and to turn from evil, and our religion encourages us to be loving, charitable and forgiving, meek and pure.

The text-book of Christian Science is educating people away from a fatal philosophy or doom and revealing the natural God--ordained dominion over disease and kindred evils.

The discoverer of the Science, Mrs. Eddy, stands today in the fore front of those who are embarked in the crusade against sin and she individually has so successfully devoted herself in behalf of a suffering race that there are hundreds of thousands of people who insistently bear witness to benefits that should excite the hope of mankind. Upright, high-minded, modest, forceful, she is at once the tender philanthropic Mother in Israel and towering reformer whose vast mental scope and capacity qualify her preeminently to be the leader of a cause which has for its object the regeneration of mankind.