Article January 19, 1907 Issue

In your issue of Dec. 28, under the caption "Matter,...

Gray Montgomery

Omaha (Neb.) Daily World Herald

In your issue of Dec. 28, under the caption "Matter, Spirit, or Both," is published a communication from Rev. John Williams, inquiring whether the teachings of Christian Science are "the idealism of Berkeley, or the pantheism of Spinoza—if neither, what?" The following definition of Christian Science is given in Webster's Universal dictionary:—

"The religion discovered and founded by Mary Baker G. Eddy; it teaches that God, the infinite person, is Spirit, Mind, and Love; that creation is therefore spiritual; that matter is a false material concept of the spiritual universe—... that man being spiritual, the perfect likeness of God, cannot be, and is never sick. It also teaches that these arguments of truth understood and practised demand the abandonment of sin, and destroy sickness."

This is not the idealism of Berkeley. Berkeley seemed to catch a glimpse into the mental realm, but he failed to recognize that God was the great and only healing power, for he recommended tar-water, and wrote a treatise about its healing properties. It is no doubt true that Berkeley, as well as Huxley, Spencer, and other prominent philosophers, have said that things do not exist as matter. Probably statements from their writings could be found which would show that they taught that the trees, the fields, mountains, etc., which we see, are only mental representations of actuality; in other words, that these things exist only in human thought. But no one since the time of Jesus and about three hundred years thereafter, until Mrs. Eddy discovered it, has contended that all reality is God and His infinite manifestations, and that nothing is real which does not manifest God.

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