Editorial October 17, 1903 Issue

A Tangled Skein

A False premise is error's favorite covert, and here it often hides its deformity beneath the folds of some frayed and familiar plausibility of which the real significance quite escapes the credulous and the unalert. Such an undiscovered falsity is fatal to a right conclusion, however symmetrical the order of thought, however well chosen the terms of its expression, and however effective and beautiful the illustrations by which it is adorned. Until that wrong premise is made right the statement can have no value and no influence save with the unthinking or the deceived. This is well illustrated in a recent article appearing in one of our religious exchanges, which states as fundamental propositions that.—

"The secret and source of all life is God. . . . All forces are one divine force. All laws are the methods of His operation. All human activities of every kind have the source of their power in the Infinite and the Eternal. . . . Man is by nature a son of God. He has come from God. He possesses elements of the divine character. . . . He is also an animal; He has come from the lower animals but He is more than an animal."

These statements may be said fairly to represent a great deal of present-day theological thought, and for many they embody what is claimed to be a rational concept of God and a common-sense view of man, and to harmonize the asserted universality of the divine government with the theories of material evolution. To the Christian Scientist, however, they are but the sounding of brass and the thinking of cymbals, for their initial thought is seen to be fallacious. They ignore the fundamental and absolutely necessary distinction between the real and the unreal, between that which is and that which seems to be, between that which manifests God—Truth—and that which is but the Spirit-denying testimony of false material sense.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Editorial

Knowledge and Progress