Our
bread," she says, "which cometh down from heaven, is Truth; our wine,
the inspiration of Love" (page 35). All this is of a piece with the
general allegorical use of the Old and New Testaments in "Science and
Health," but it is a marked departure from the sacrament of the Lord's
Supper even in the simple memorial way in which it is kept by
non-liturgical churches.

Mrs. Eddy's theology, then, is in part a reaction from the hard phrasing
of the evangelical doctrines in which she was trained and it is indeed
in part a reaching out toward the interpretation of these doctrines in
terms of life and experience, but as a theology it is extraordinarily
loose and even though the familiar phrases of Protestant and Catholic
faiths are employed, what is left is wholly out of the current of the
main movement of Christian theology heretofore. The central articles of
the historic creeds practically disappear under Mrs. Eddy's treatment.

Here, then, is a philosophy which will not bear examination, a use of
Scripture which can possibly have no standing in any scholarly
fellowship, and a theology which empties the central Christian doctrines
of the great meanings which have heretofore been associated with them.
And yet in spite of all this, Christian Science gets on and commends
itself to so considerable a number of really sincere people as to make
it evident enough that it must have some kind of appealing and
sustaining power. Where, then, is the hiding of its power? Partly, of
course, in its spaciousness. There are times when a half-truth has a
power which the whole truth does not seem to possess. Half truths can be
accepted unqualifiedly; they are capable of a more direct appeal and if
they be skillfully directed toward needs and perplexities they are
always sure of an acceptance; they make things too simple, that is one
secret of their hold upon us. This, of course, is more largely true
among the spiritually undisciplined and the mentally untrained, but even
the wisest folk find it easier upon occasion to accept a half truth
which promises an easy satisfaction or deliverance than a whole truth
which needs to be wrestled with and may be agonized over before it
brings us into some better estate.

_The Real Power of Christian Science is in Neither Its Philosophy Nor
Its Theology_

We have already seen what predisposing influences there were in the
breaking down of what we have called the accepted validations of
historic Chris