Article December 17, 1904 Issue

Is Matter Slowly Dying?

WENTWORTH B. WINSLOW.

The Electrical Review, one of the leading electrical papers, in the issue of March 12, 1904, contained an article entitled, "The Present Condition of Radioactive Science," which deals with the much-talked-of discovery of radium. The concluding paragraph opens with the question which is the caption of this article and continues as follows: "Another interesting side of this subject is the explanation of how it happens that these unstable compounds have persisted through the ages until to-day. These changes are taking place with extreme slowness, and it is even possible that the radioactive materials themselves are intermediate stages in the disintegration of a primal element. On the other hand, it may be that all matter is passing through the process of disintegration, is living its life, though the change, as compared with that of the radioactive materials is so slow as not to be detectable. As shown above, an atom might lose particles without the change in atomic weight being detectable. The change may be so slow that the electrical effects are not measurable, and the products cannot accumulate in sufficient quantities to be detected by chemical means."

In Science and Health, pp. 572, 264, our Leader says, "Under the supremacy of Spirit, it will be seen and acknowledged that matter must disappear;" "Matter disappears under the microscope of Spirit." On pages 279, 274, and 278, she speaks of "the doom of matter;" "Matter, examined in the light of divine Metaphysics, disappears," and "Divine Metaphysics explains away matter." She also declares that "The fading forms of matter, the mortal body and material earth are the fleeting concepts of the human mind." "The elements and functions of the physical body and the physical world will change, as mortal mind changes in its phenomena." "Every object in the material universe will be destroyed" (pp. 263, 124, 267).

When we consider that Mrs. Eddy has proclaimed this fact, to which the world is slowly awakening, for more than thirty years, and has caused it to be widely known,—so widely, indeed, that those who have not understood Christian Science in some measure, have ridiculed and lampooned it, and so far as possible discredited her theory,—it surely need not surprise any that Christian Scientists honor one who enunciated these truths so long ago, as their true discoverer. It is to be noted that now, having agreed with Mrs. Eddy up to a certain point, these men are quite unable to account for matter's unreality or unsubstantiality; while she very definitely states that divine Metaphysics causes its disappearance; that the realization of the allness of Spirit, and of the unreality of matter, convinces us of Spirit's omnipresence, and consequently matter can have neither place nor presence.

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