An evangelist was holding meetings in a Massachusetts town recently, giving special attention to Bible Readings. Among other subjects, which came up for discussion, was the healing of the woman who had an issue of blood. After describing this case the missionary branched off into the subject of Christian Science, which he denounced as the most dreadful doctrine of the century. He also spoke very disrespectfully of Rev. M. B. G. Eddy, making erroneous statements about her.
Of Jesus he said, in substance, that his hearers could take the Master for what they pleased. Some might receive him as their Redeemer, through his death; others might take him as a good man, who saved them by his example; while others again might find in him a healer. As for himself, the evangelist said he had not faith enough to take Jesus for a physical healer.
Furthermore, after abusing our Science generally, he declared that there was not a Christian in the whole of our Church.
This was too much for Mrs. C., who has a son in our Church, though not herself a member of it. She rose in her seat, declared to those about her that the speaker's utterances were false, and added, "I am going to tell him of it;" and so she did. She told him, moreover, that she had a son who belonged to the Christian Scientist Church in Boston, whom she knew to be a Christian. "Such men as you can never make anybody else believe my boy is not a Christian."
This evangelist demanded seventy or eighty dollars down, when he came to that church to work, besides two collections a week, yet he blamed Scientists for receiving pay for their work. Another's mote is so much easier to see than our own beam, that clergymen, sometimes with salaries of ten thousand a year, inveigh against us for charging for our teaching. To quote against such detractors their own favorite text, "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn!" Health is worth at least as much as sermons.
