Article April 18, 1901 Issue

From Darwinism to Christian Science

BY P.

Coming home from college a few years ago, I boastingly proclaimed to my friends that I had learned the true explanation of life. There I had taken a course of lectures on evolution and Darwinism, delivered by a certain famous materialist of this country, and had, so I thought, been "converted" by the truth of these teachings. The survival of the fittest, the extinction of the individual, and other preachings of this hopeless "faith" had been accepted as the only true doctrine. But what a doctrine of despair!

When I examined myself, I found I was most unhappy. I was not satisfied. Many tormenting doubts began to present themselves. Perhaps Darwinism was not the whole truth. Then what was true? From this despairing consciousness there went forth an unformulated prayer to the unknown God to reveal His truth, be it cruel or kind.

Not long after this my prayer was answered. I was persuaded to put myself under Christian Science treatment and was surprised to find that it relieved me from this great mental depression. Slowly I awoke to the fact that Christian Science was the Truth—and a beneficent Truth. What a relief to know that God, the loving Father, was the only Creator, and that none of His ideas could be annihilated! It was a joy to learn that death was not the end of all, and that the cruel, mad strife of the world was unreal and only in the dream existence. One finds, however that in Christian Science there is a law of the survival of the fittest; but this law does not mean that the stronger man must crush his weaker brother to the wall, but it does mean that all selfishness and sensualism in human nature is to be blotted out, leaving only that which is fit to live,—purity and unselfishness. This is indeed the survival of the fittest.

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