Criticism by Francis J. Fluno 

Criticism is fault-finding. It shuts you out of heaven. It will darken all your skies. It will keep you from demonstrating for yourself and others. It will bar you from progress. It leads you into all trouble. It leads you into all discord, into all unkindness, impatience, hard heartedness, unfriendliness—and finally into all evil, hatefulness envy. Just as long as that spirit of criticism remains in your thought, and you leave it there, just so long will not progress, just so long will you not be able to demonstrate, just so long will you not be able to find your way in Truth, because you will be looking for faults constantly. You are fault finding on a mortal, material plane.

You will criticize everybody and everything. You will criticize people in every way —the clothes they wear, the way they walk, the way they talk and the way they enunciate, the way they pronounce their words, the way they sing, and everything they do in every possible way; and that is all you will do.

If the spirit of criticism is abroad in your heart, it is growing. I do not say that it is there; but if it is, and it is not removed after being detected, it will, of course, remain there and grow. Then by aid by you will want to know why you do not understand and cannot demonstrate the Truth as you would like to. It is because you are finding fault with people—finding fault with what they do and say. You ae not looking for Truth and so are not finding Truth in what is done—but you are studying faults. Faults are what you are looking for, aid they are all you are thinking of.

Criticism is the worst thing that you can get into your thoughts. It is one of the keys to perdition because it leads there. It leads to all unkindness; it leads into ingratitude; it leads into everything but love for your neighbors and friends. Anyone can criticize. I never saw a person so great an idiot, if he could talk at all, but he could find fault with others. Anyone can do it, and just as soon you let it enter your thought and leave it there, it will grow until you soon will think you are an elected critic —that is your mission, that is what you are here for, that is the work you are to do.

Criticism is an awful thing. It never did any good and never will do any good. It never can, because it is all on a mortal plane, every bit of it. You are not helping others, you are not helping yourself. It does net belong to Christian Science for there is nothing Christian about it. There is not anything scientific about it, not one thing. 

Benefits begin when you follow Christian Science

I have seen it all my life; I have seen it from earliest childhood, and I know everyone of you has, and it is a thing that ought to be well looked into, to see whether you have it or not, because you are a student of Christian Science; you are a student of the Science of being. If you are studying that, you will progress in everything you do.

Nothing you touch, but you will do well with it, because Christian Science leads to wisdom, love, kindness, and satisfaction. It leads the way to 

kindness to everyone, to helpfulness of everyone, and it will lead you to see opportunities and will open up opportunities to you that you never saw before in everything, in every walk of life, to become better in everything you do. Everything you touch will grow out of plainness before you; everything is elucidated, everything is made plain, and everything is made easy.

There are no hard roads and no hard work. In fact, you will find no such thing as hard times, and no hard work to get along, if you are studying the great facts themselves. The great trouble is to let go of mortal sense and study Truth, study the facts of being. Do you think you have to hold on with one hand to mortal law and its way of living? If you will let go, you will find your living sure, and you will a better living and an easier life than you ever had before. We lose our sense of worry; we lose the worry of business; we lose the worry of finding business; we lose the thought of our body.

You will then lose the thought of losing your life, of losing your health, because you ae growing into strength, life, health, freedom, because you are growing into true manhood a d womanhood. You ae growing to be better scholars of yourself and students of Christian Science. You are not students of the way people walk along the street, finding fault with the way they walk, with the cut of their dress, with the cut of their coat, finding faults with their habits, with their shortcomings, with their little faults and little feelings. You are students of Christian Science!