Article July 20, 1907 Issue

Our reverend critic objects to the Christian Science teaching...

Burt LeRoy Knowles

Worcester (Mass.) Telegram

Our reverend critic objects to the Christian Science teaching regarding the unreality of matter, and states that it is not a new philosophy. We are pleased to agree with him here. The teaching that matter is not an eternal reality, is as old as the Scriptures, for we find it repeatedly set forth in them that the things which are real and eternal are spiritual, not material. Mrs. Eddy is thoroughly aware that ideas akin to this phase of Christian Science teaching have been held by some of the greatest thinkers of the ages, and she alludes to and quotes them often in her writings. But until she wrote "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," no one had been able to frame these ideas so that they could be demonstrably understood. During the past decade, however, this theory of matter has been widely accepted among the foremost natural scientists.

The gentleman adds, "Will some one tell us what a state of mind that does not exist might perhaps be." This is most easily answered by illustration. The wildly impossible ideas of a sleeper's fancy have no foundation in fact, for they immediately vanish upon his awaking. And what is the state of one's mind but the aggregate of thoughts which one is entertaining? It is one of the tenets of the Christian Science Church to strive to have in one's self the Mind "which was also in Christ Jesus"—that is, to lay hold on the ideas which he taught and demonstrated regarding the healing of sin and disease; to gain an understanding, "a systematized knowledge" of God and man's relation to him, as set forth in I John, 3:1-3.

Our critic denies us the right to apply the word "science" to our teaching about God, because it does not harmonize with the testimony of physical sense. There is not one of the sciences that does not continually oppose sense-testimony. What an inaccurate idea we would have of the phenomenon of the setting of the sun, if we relied upon what our eyes tell us! The critic seems to convey the idea that Christian Science sweeps out of the universe all materiality, supplying nothing to take its place. In this he is not clear as to the mission of this great truth. As long as we appear in the flesh, we may expect to find other forms of matter here with us also, but Christian Science teaches us how to keep matter in subjection; how not to make a god of it in any form; how to exercise our divinely given dominion over it. We affirm that all that is good and true in science and in nature, and all that tends toward the ultimate salvation of mankind, is of God and will endure forever.

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