Article August 5, 1905 Issue

Harmony vs. Discord

FLORENCE PARKER.

ONE day a clever violinist friend got into the train with me after a hard day's teaching. She was tired, and her last pupil, a boy of ten years, had given her much trouble. She told me that his latest idea was to insist on knowing the names of the intervals between the semi-tones, and when he was told that they had no names, for there were no such intervals on the violin, he insisted that as he was able to produce such sounds, they must be real, and have names; and he accompanied his words by discordant sounds on his instrument. Nothing would convince him that, even though he could produce these seeming intervals, they were wrong, and had to be avoided if he wanted to understand and express beautiful music.

After she had left me I sat thinking about Christian Science, and it suddenly came to me how much we beginners is Science are like that small boy. We insist, some of us, on believing that error,—sin, sickness, death,—is real; we have even gone so far as to give it names and places, and made it seem impossible to demonstrate harmony, because we thus allow discord to secure a foothold. We must, therefore, do what the small boy is learning to do under his wise teacher,—avoid looking for, or listening to, or believing in, things that do not exist, and then we shall slowly but surely rise into a glorious understanding of the perfect harmony of the things that are.

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The Demoniac
August 5, 1905
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