Article October 10, 1908 Issue

THE QUINTESSENCE OF DUST

WILLARD S. MATTOX.

There are many serious misconceptions of Christian Science, and among them must be enumerated the supposition that it teaches that we have no bodies. Many critics have asserted this, and many beginners have worried over it until they saw the truth and realized that Christian Science teaches no such thing. Christian Science is not a doctrine of annihilation. It does not wipe out anything that really exists. It could not if it tried, but it does not even try. Divine metaphysics does not deprive a man of aught that belongs to his real being. On the contrary. our text-book says "consciousness constructs a better body when faith in matter has been conquered" (Science and Health, p. 425). It should be understood, however. that body and matter are not identical, synonymous, or suggestive, the one of the other.

Whatever of denial enters into the statements of Christian Science comes there to destroy a false belief. When the false belief disappears there is nothing left to deny. Truth is conscious only of what is true. Truth's very presence and all-efficiency is the only denial of error which it is possible or necessary for Truth to make. We are accustomed to associate a vigorous denial of error with our affirmations of the concord of being, but this association arises only because we still seem to be conscious of something which needs to be denied.

It may be said, then, that Christian Science is emphatically a religion of affirmation. It affirms that all good is, here and now. It affirms the truth about God, man, and the universe, about Mind and body, about law and government. It declares that whatever is real about our being, God made, and that therefore it must be good, and that what God did not make is not real and has no actual existence. Man's individuality or identity is his true being, and it would be impossible to rob him of his God-given individuality and identity. Christian Science has not come to destroy but to fulfil.

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