Setting out to improve on Christianity by recasting it as a science? Claiming the Bible’s real meaning is inaccessible unless unlocked by some hitherto unknown key?  What folly; yet I devoted the first half of my life to a little well-intentioned band engaged in that very project.

Ecclesiastes foresaw it: “God has made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions” (Eccl. 7:29).  One such invention, loosed upon a gullible world by Mary Baker Eddy, was Christian Science.

The wonderful George MacDonald, 19^th-century precursor of C. S. Lewis, wrote some lines perfectly depicting the childish—not childlike—mentality which foolishly ignores the very best in order to trifle with empty imitations. They go this way:

I see a little child whose eager hands search the thick stream that drains the crowded street for possible things hid in its current slow.  

Near by, behind him, a great palace stands where kings might welcome nobles to their feet.  Soft sounds, sweet scents, fair sights there only go—there the child’s father lives, but the child does not know.  

Oh, eager, hungry, busy-seeking child, rise, turn round, run in, run up the stair: far in a chamber from rude noise exiled, thy father sits, pondering how thou dost fare. 

 The mighty man will clasp thee to his breast; will kiss thee, stroke the tangles of thy hair, and lap thee warm in fold on fold of lovely rest. 

This is from MacDonald’s Diary of an Old Soul, a collection of short verses for every day in the year (entries for September 26 and 27).  I encourage you to go over to Amazon right now and buy a copy and work it into your daily quiet time, if not already doing so.

Lewis makes a similar and oft-quoted analogy, believed by some scholars to be derived from the above, about shallow-minded mortals content to make mudpies in a puddle when an outing to the ocean was offered them.  But I much prefer MacDonald’s vivid word-picture with its imagery of the kindly father and mighty king who personally awaits our coming—a direct refutation of CS with its coldly impersonal misrepresentation of God.