Modern Religious Cults and MovementsAtkins, Gaius Glenn
Religion
Modern Religious Cults and Movements
Atkins, Gaius Glenn
Christian Science; New Thought; Religion; Spiritual healing
Everything means something else. The Ark is "the idea, or reflection of
truth, proved to be as immortal as its Principle." Babel is
"self-destroying error"; baptism is "submergence in Spirit"; Canaan is
"a sensuous belief"; Dan (Jacob's son) is "animal magnetism"; the dove
is "a symbol of divine Science"; the earth is "a type of eternity and
immortality"; the river Euphrates is "divine Science encompassing the
universe and man"; evening "the mistiness of mortal thought"; flesh "an
error, a physical belief"; Ham (Noah's son) is "corporeal belief";
Jerusalem "mortal belief and knowledge obtained from the five corporeal
senses"; night, "darkness; doubt; fear"; a Pharisee, "corporeal and
sensuous belief"; river is "a channel of thought"; a rock is "a
spiritual foundation"; sheep are "innocence"; a sword "the idea of
Truth."[43]
[Footnote 43: Glossary, p. 579--passim.]
Mrs. Eddy does not hesitate to make such textual modifications of
passages as suit her purpose and even when she is not dealing with her
texts in such ways as these, she is constantly citing for her proofs
passages which cannot by any recognized canon of interpretation possibly
be made to mean what she says they mean. Beneath her touch simple things
become vague, the Psalms lose their haunting beauty, even the Lord's
Prayer takes a form which we may reverently believe the author of it
would not recognize.
"Our Father: Mother God, all harmonious, Adorable One, Thy kingdom
is come; Thou art ever present. Enable us to know--as in heaven, so
on earth--God is omnipotent, supreme. Give us grace for to-day;
feed the famished affections; and love is reflected in love; and
God leadeth us not into temptation, but delivereth us from sin,
disease and death. For God is Infinite, all Power, all Life, Truth,
Love, over all and All."
_Its Conception of God_
It was quite as inevitable that she should undertake to fit her
speculations into the fabric of the theology in which she and most of
her followers had been trained, as that she should try to secure for her
speculation the weight of the authority of the Bible. She would have to
take for her point of departure the centrality of Christ, the
outstanding Christian doctrines, markedly the Incarnation and the
Atonement and she would need somehow to dispose of the Sacraments. All
this is inevitably implied in the persistent designation of her whole
system as a Christian system.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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