● ● ● for it? Who but the evil so-called, and does not evil destroy itself through its own lie, namely, a belief in evil, sin, suffering and death? Yes it does, in belief, and to sever it from this doom would be an evil of itself.14
On one occasion in 1905, Mrs. Eddy called the full Board of Directors and all the editors of the Journal and Sentinel to Pleasant View to take them to task for a single clause in a Sentinel article: “. . . a diseased body is not acceptable to God.”15 According to Christian Science, she pointed out, a healthy physical body was no more acceptable to God as the reality of man’s being than a sick one, since man was God’s spiritual image and likeness.
From that, she apparently went on to discuss the Christ-idea manifest in the life of Jesus as representative of man’s nature as the son of God. At one point she referred them to a passage in Science and Health which quotes and interprets the verse in Hebrews defining “the Son” as “the brightness of His [God’s] glory, and the express [expressed] image of His person [infinite Mind].” The exegesis in Science and Health continues:
It is noteworthy that the phrase “express image” in the Common Version is, in the Greek Testament, character. Using this word in its higher meaning, we may assume that the author of this remarkable epistle regarded Christ as the Son of God, the royal reflection of the infinite; and the cause given for the exaltation of Jesus, Mary’s son, was that he “loved righteousness and hated iniquity.”16
Even before pointing out the offending error in the statement from the Sentinel, Mrs. Eddy in her interview with the Directors and editors had solemnly charged the former to read the periodicals carefully and help her keep out of them any erroneous or misleading statements that might have escaped the editors’ notice. Typically, she related these stern but workaday instructions to the magnitude and urgency of the first chapter of Hebrews. Evidently she felt that the Directors, to the extent that they were to see the brightness of God’s glory and be anointed with the oil of gladness above their fellows, must so love righteousness and hate iniquity that they could detect even a small, unconscious error in the statement of Science and understand the disastrous consequences to which it could lead.
In this case, there was a danger that Christian Scientists might come to believe that physical health of itself was a sign of grace, i.e., that a well body was more acceptable to God than a sick one. Her statement, “The healthy sinner is the hardened sinner,”17 was enough ● ● ●
14. A. L&M 25–3086.
15. CSS, September 30, 1905. A full account of this visit by Annie M. Knott, one of the associate editors, is to be found in We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, III, pp. 85–89. To Hanna, Mrs. Eddy had written two years earlier (L&M 40–5298A):
There is a tendency to teach that man is physically as well as spiritually God’s son. This error loses the logic of Christian Science. The likeness of God, Spirit, is spiritual and in no way allied to matter. Please keep the distinction clear else it follows that sin inseparable from the flesh or physical man is a part of His image or likeness. One defect in divine Metaphysics breaks the link in Science[;] hence our statement of this Science must be consistent.
17. Ibid., p. 404.