Article August 10, 1907 Issue

WHO SHALL DECIDE?

REV. CHARLES D. REYNOLDS

If Christian Science is untrue, as its opponents aver, in favor of what faith or doctrine would they have its followers abandon it? If Christian Scientists are to be allowed any Christian teaching whatsoever, what shall it be, should they renounce Christian Science? Something must take its place, and what? Will the opponents of Christian Science champion pure materialism and offer it in exchange for the pure idealism of Christian Science? That would imply the acceptance of the proposition that the Supreme Cause, the creator of the universe, is an unconscious, self-created, non-intelligent, mechanical energy or force; a self-sustained mechanism, wholly devoid of the power to reflect or know.

Do not those who would offer this proposition in exchange for the teaching of Christian Science that the great First Cause is Mind, Spirit, know that no spirituality or religion of any kind is deducible from that basis? If the dynamic agent of creation is an unconsciously working material energy, a mere self-impelled stream of physical force with no self-knowledge or conscious purpose from start to finish, then man is wholly material, and with all else, death is the fate that ends all. Given this proposition, atheism—the denial of the existence of one infinitely intelligent God or Mind as the creator of the universe, and man's ability to prove his unity or spiritual kinship with this divine power—is an inescapable conclusion. Man cannot intelligently communicate with what is not conscious and intelligent, nor can the so-called laws of matter inspire loving confidence and the desire to lead a pure and upright life.

Perchance the opponents of Christian Science would recommend one of the innumerable dualistic systems in exchange for Christian Science? These are all semi-material. They all take their rise from the proposition that the spiritual and material are correlated and coexistent, if not also coextensive. If this hypothesis be accepted, then it must follow that Deity entered into partnership with matter or at least sustains some kind of relation thereto,—either made it out of nothing and entered it in part or wholly, or found it at hand—already existent—and entered it, or remaining external to it used it in some way as material to further His creative purposes. Or, as another theory supposes, Deity changed species and brought forth His creation by transforming Himself into the physical and material.

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