Mary Baker Eddy
Modern Saints and Seers page 108
by Jean Finot
Christian Science healers need to have a robust and unshakable faith, for if they do not succeed in their task it is because their own spirit has been infected by doubt.
Mrs. Eddy declared that our concrete and practical age required, above all, a religion of reality; that men could no longer be content with vague promises of future bliss. What they needed was a religion of the present that would end their sufferings and procure for them serenity and happiness on earth. The title of "applied Christianity" has been adopted by Christian Science, which advises us to make use of the teachings of Jesus in our daily life, and to reap all the advantages of such a practice. We have need of truth "applied" to life just as we have need of telegraphs, telephones and electric apparatus, and now--say the Scientists--for the first time in man's existence he is offered a really practical religious machinery, which enables him to overcome misfortune and to establish his happiness, his health, and his salvation on a solid basis.
The Scientists claim to have recourse to the same spiritual law by means of which Jesus effected His cures, and they declare that its efficacy is undeniable, since all Mrs. Eddy's pupils who use it are able to heal the sick. One may suggest that Jesus performed miracles because He was the Saviour of the world. Mrs. Eddy replies that statements are attributed to Him which never issued from His lips; that He said (in the Gospel according to St. John) that it was not He who spoke or acted, but His Father; and stated elsewhere, that the Son could do nothing of Himself. Also that Jesus never sent His disciples forth to preach without adding that they should also heal. "Heal the sick," was His supreme command. And that He never counselled the use of drugs or medicines.
The healing of the sick, according to Mrs. Eddy, was one of the chief functions of the representatives of the Church during the first three centuries of Christianity, her subsequent loss of importance and power being largely due to the renunciation of this essential principle.
Healing is not miraculous, but merely the result of a normal spiritual law acting in conformity with the Divine Will. The leader of the new "Scientists" explains that Jesus had no supernatural powers, and that all He did was done according to natural law. Consequently everybody, when once brought into harmony with spiritual truth, can accomplish what He accomplished.
Some of Mrs. Eddy's statements have an undeniable practical value. For instance, she attacks "fear" as one of the chief causes of human misery, and declares that it is wrong to fear draughts of air, or wet feet, or the eating and drinking of certain substances--and wrong, above all, to fear microbes.
http://manybooks.net/pages/finotj2512625126-8/108.html
by Jean Finot
Christian Science healers need to have a robust and unshakable faith, for if they do not succeed in their task it is because their own spirit has been infected by doubt.
Mrs. Eddy declared that our concrete and practical age required, above all, a religion of reality; that men could no longer be content with vague promises of future bliss. What they needed was a religion of the present that would end their sufferings and procure for them serenity and happiness on earth. The title of "applied Christianity" has been adopted by Christian Science, which advises us to make use of the teachings of Jesus in our daily life, and to reap all the advantages of such a practice. We have need of truth "applied" to life just as we have need of telegraphs, telephones and electric apparatus, and now--say the Scientists--for the first time in man's existence he is offered a really practical religious machinery, which enables him to overcome misfortune and to establish his happiness, his health, and his salvation on a solid basis.
The Scientists claim to have recourse to the same spiritual law by means of which Jesus effected His cures, and they declare that its efficacy is undeniable, since all Mrs. Eddy's pupils who use it are able to heal the sick. One may suggest that Jesus performed miracles because He was the Saviour of the world. Mrs. Eddy replies that statements are attributed to Him which never issued from His lips; that He said (in the Gospel according to St. John) that it was not He who spoke or acted, but His Father; and stated elsewhere, that the Son could do nothing of Himself. Also that Jesus never sent His disciples forth to preach without adding that they should also heal. "Heal the sick," was His supreme command. And that He never counselled the use of drugs or medicines.
The healing of the sick, according to Mrs. Eddy, was one of the chief functions of the representatives of the Church during the first three centuries of Christianity, her subsequent loss of importance and power being largely due to the renunciation of this essential principle.
Healing is not miraculous, but merely the result of a normal spiritual law acting in conformity with the Divine Will. The leader of the new "Scientists" explains that Jesus had no supernatural powers, and that all He did was done according to natural law. Consequently everybody, when once brought into harmony with spiritual truth, can accomplish what He accomplished.
Some of Mrs. Eddy's statements have an undeniable practical value. For instance, she attacks "fear" as one of the chief causes of human misery, and declares that it is wrong to fear draughts of air, or wet feet, or the eating and drinking of certain substances--and wrong, above all, to fear microbes.
http://manybooks.net/pages/finotj2512625126-8/108.html
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home