Editor Muncie Times.

I have just had the pleasure of reading your vivacious editorial of the 18th ult., entitled "A Comforting Thought." I am a grateful adherent of Christian Science, but I enjoy a bright piece of raillery like that notwithstanding, for it affords a most genial contrast, at least, to the dull and dismal effusions against Christian Science with which a certain newspaper syndicate has been plying so many Indiana newspapers lately.

I recognize that humorists do not hold themselves to a very rigid exactitude in respect to the facts upon which they build up their phosphorescent fabrics of fun. A few years ago, Mark Twain was employed to write an article against Christian Science. He began it by admitting that he knew next to nothing about his subject (which speedily became quite apparent), and then he proceeded to bombard the "man of straw" which it suited him to call Christian Science, with his characteristic brilliancy.

Permit me to say that you do not give the name of "A Christian Scientist in the east," nor do you quote his words, merely giving to your readers what you conceive to be the meaning of what he is alleged to have said or written at some place which is not named, and at some time which is not stated. But a certain misty indefiniteness is probably quite useful, at times, in the trade of ridicule. Facts are often such stubborn things that they knock all the fun out.

Will you kindly permit me to explain the attitude of Christian Science in respect to "weather," etc. I ask it because some of your readers might take your "man of straw." which you riddle so mercilessly, too seriously, and form erroneous conceptions as to Christian Science.

Christian Science deals in a practical way with sickness and sin. It proves the truth of its doctrine by its works. It asks the world to obey the Scriptural command judge of a tree by its fruits. Already, it has healed thousands upon thousands of those who had been abandoned by drug doctors as incurable. Already, it has reclaimed hundreds of drunkards, libertines, and slaves of morphine, etc. Already it has converted thousands of infidels and agnostics to the Christ-truth, from which they had been repelled by the man-made theologies which teach a revengeful Deity.

To do these things, Christian Science finds it necessary to seek and teach the truth respecting what the material universe (including the weather, etc., of your editorial) really is and is not. It finds that the popular concepts as to these things are as much in error as were those concerning the phenomena of the revolution of the sun about the earth, before Copernicus. Copernicus knew when he asserted that the sun does not really rise in the east, as it appears to do, that he would encounter the sneers of popular ignorance as well as the persecutions of churchcraft. Christian Scientists knew equally well that their doctrine respecting the unreality of matter is not the popular concept; but it is seeking what is true. whether popular or unpopular. It states its doctrine clearly and unmistakably, not abating one jot or tittle in order to placate popular prejudice or to avoid ridicule and opposition.

It teaches that to be reality which is eternal and unchanging, and that all else is transient, temporal, and apparent, and therefore, unreal. Its teachings closely correspond to those of philosophy, which divide everything into noumenon (the essence or reality), and phenomenon (the appearance to sense-perception). Its teachings closely correspond also to those of Paul when he writes "things seen" and "things unseen." Its teachings are rapidly being adopted by many of the greatest modern physicists of late years. For instance, Professor Huxley, one of the greatest natural scientists. near the close of his life, wrote these remarkable words:—

"What is this terrible thing called matter, after all, except the unknown, hypothetical cause of states of our own consciousness?"

Let us try to illustrate what he means by that profound statement. Your sight-perception says that a certain object is opaque. But if your eyes were constructed so that they possessed an X-ray power of vision, that object might appear transparent. So what we call the qualities of opacity and transparency are not, after all, qualities inherent in objects, but they are merely attributed qualities; that is, qualities attributed to them by our sense-perception. So with heat and cold. What appears to the editor of the Times to be rather chilly weather, would appear altogether too warm to the Esquimaux. If his sense-thought of heat and cold were like that of the mythical salamander of the ancients, instead of his wit rising to such a brilliant altitude along with the rise of the mercury lately, he would have been wrapping his furs about him like a cross and stupid polar bear. But I have only to indicate some of the more important finger-posts of Christian Science thinking along these lines.

Study what Christian Science really teaches on the subject "of this terrible thing, called matter," and you will find it to be quite different from the popular misconceptions on the subject. I know its lines of thought are not easy to indolent thinkers. I know that they may easily be burlesqued. But the same is true of many great verities. Christian Science is a great spiritual thought-advance, and the fact that it moves, without fear or favor, against popular beliefs, seeking no faint-hearted or sinuous compromises with ignorance or falsehood, can retard its beneficent progress only temporarily if at all. Clarence A. Buskirk.
In The Muncie (Ind.) Times.