Editorial September 26, 1901 Issue

Philosophy

Editor

There are, and have been, philosophies many, but how much true philosophy apart from the Bible? The world has grown gray with speculation along philosophical lines based on material premises, or in attempts at the admixture of the material and the spiritual; and with what result? The result that the larger part of it is still speculating, and is as far away from the goal of real philosophy as ever. To find the true Philosopher's Stone mankind must turn away from the material to the wholly spiritual,—in other words, to the Bible; especially to the life and teaching of Jesus. This life and teaching, correctly understood and demonstrated, comprehends the best there is of all philosophy. The Sermon on the Mount is the greatest treatise on the subject. Rightly interpreted, it furnishes the best philosophical text the world affords. The philosophy which teaches the love of God and man, making the one co-equal with the other, is the true philosophy. The life and teaching that proved divine Love to be all-powerful in healing disease and destroying sin, is the true life and teaching.

The life and teaching which to-day most nearly approaches the life and teaching of Jesus, furnishes the best criterion of true philosophy. Where is to be found a work or text-book on religious philosophy which sets forth a system of healing sickness and curing sin on a strictly spiritual basis, save the Christian Science text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures"? And where is to be found to-day a person who for upwards of thirty-five years has devoted (and is now devoting) to the establishment of this system of healing disease and curing sin, the whole of her time, save the author of this text-book, Mary Baker G. Eddy? There is but one such text-book, there is but one such author, in the world now.

This text-book teaches the unreality of matter, but upon what basis? Not a material or a semi-material, but an absolutely spiritual, basis. God is Spirit, and God is all. Nothing but God and His ideas exist. These ideas are the universe and man. If God is Spirit, His ideas—His creations—must reflect Him. Spirit cannot reflect or create matter, if matter is something apart from or opposite to Spirit. Can Spirit evolve matter as an entity apart from itself—Spirit? The only logical answer is, No. Spirit manifests the spiritual, nothing else. This, in a word, is the simple, yet invincible, logic of the Christian Science text-book. Who can consistently gainsay such logic?

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