Article January 4, 1908 Issue

The human mind is inherently dogmatic

Frederick Dixon—London, England

The Freethinker

The human mind is inherently dogmatic. Convinced of its innate wisdom, it would strain its neighbor's opinions through meshes of its own dimensions. In even the less serious matters of daily life this habit is productive of tragic episodes, and the tragic note deepens as the issues at stake become more momentous. It is unfortunately true that the history of religion has been only too often the record of the evolution of the persecuted into persecutors. That, however, is scarcely a reason why the odium theologicum should be perpetuated in the assaults of the rationalist on Christianity, yet the article in your issue of Oct. 27, on Mrs. Eddy, gives evidence of it. This, perhaps, is the more regrettable as it is the custom of the Christian Science Church never to attack its neighbor's opinions. Actuated by a supreme faith in the ultimate triumph of Truth, the Christian Scientist prays, not that his conception of Truth, but that Truth itself shall prevail. He puts, in short, into practice the great maxim of Gamaliel, the wisdom of which, for almost two thousand years, Christendom has proclaimed almost as persistently as it has ignored it.

Mrs. Eddy is a venerable lady who lives, in great seclusion. "in a simple cottage home, amidst a few acres of low-fenced ground," on the brow of the hill which rises over the city of Concord, N. H. Here, surrounded by a few devoted friends, she passes her time in directing the great movement of which she is the Founder, and in doing so she labors for the benefit of humanity. Her income is derived entirely from the proceeds of her work as a writer and a teacher. Her charities, though unostentatious, are very considerable. The accuracy of these facts should at all times secure for her a courteous hearing; and when it is remembered that Christian Science is no mushroom growth, but has for forty years been slowly but irresistibly twining itself around the globe; that its foundations have been sunk, not in the emotions, but in the reason of hundreds of thousands of intelligent men and women of all conditions and in every land; and that the truth of its premises is being hourly demonstrated, not in mere theories of a world to come, but in the destruction of disease and sickness, in the conquest of suffering and sin, in the maintenance of joy and peace,—in the realization, in a word, that "the kingdom of God is within you,"—that hearing should surely be no less respectful than courteous.

It is, of course, always a matter of peculiar difficulty to give verbal expression to an unfamiliar phase of truth. Words are the expression of our thoughts, and almost before the eye has taken in the letters the mind has invested them with a preconceived meaning. To thousands of the readers of Science and Health, the text-book in which Mrs. Eddy has given her teaching to the world, the word Christian stands for the dogmas of a particular sect, just as the word God conveys the image of a magnified mortal. This is perhaps even more true of the word science. "We have been accustomed," is the admission of one of the most thoughtful critics of Christian Science, "to regard science as dealing with secondary causes or physical facts," and on this is based the objection to applying it to primary causes, which are declared to be "in the realm of unprovable assumptions." The orthodox churchman rails at Mrs. Eddy because she will not make God manlike; the scientific materialist condemns her because she denies the reality of matter, and the scientific idealist because she denies the reality of energy, as ordinarily believed in. Yet the churchman is forced to admit that prayers to a personal God have never enabled him to restore "the healing of the seamless dress." while the materialist and the idealist account for what they term the thaumaturgy of Jesus by the simple process of relegating it to the scrap-heap of exploded superstitions.

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