From time to time the attitude of Christian Scientists towards Protestantism continues to be challenged. The following illustrates this point. An inquirer into Christian Science asked a practitioner the question, "Do Christian Scientists call themselves Protestants?" "Yes, indeed," was the reply, "and Christian Science brings us a new understanding of what it means to be a true Protestant." As Christian Scientists we shall be apt to agree with this reply and perhaps to feel it might be profitable for us to ask ourselves here and now, "What kind of Protestants are we?"
For we are Protestants, and to a very much greater degree than perhaps every Christian Scientist realizes. Christian Science is completely protestant against everything that is not derived from God. Mary Baker Eddy was the greatest, the most profound Protestant of her day. Not only did she protest against what the world recognizes as evil, but against its false beliefs of what is good. She had the courage to stand up against much of what the world calls good and denounce it, to protest against it in all its forms. The statements of Truth she utters in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" are sublime and mighty protests against everything that is not of God. On one occasion she said in a sermon (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 172): "Dispensing the Word charitably, but separating the tares from the wheat, let us declare the positive and the negative of metaphysical Science; what it is, and what it is not. Intrepid, self-oblivious Protestants in a higher sense than ever before, let us meet and defeat the claims of sense and sin, regardless of the bans or clans pouring in their fire upon us."
In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 12), "It is neither Science nor Truth which acts through blind belief, nor is it the human understanding of the divine healing Principle as manifested in Jesus, whose humble prayers were deep and conscientious protests of Truth,—of man's likeness to God and of man's unity with Truth and Love." That statement arrests one's attention. It stands for much; it surely epitomizes the prayer that is true Christian Science treatment, that exalts God and handles error from the standpoint of the allness of God.
