Men usually admire qualities in others which contrast with their own. In illustration of this rule we may admire the courtesy and restraint with which many voice their dissent from those who hold that Christian Science has succeeded where its philosophical predecessors, from Zeno down, have failed, and that the "ancient antinomies" are actually solved or dissolved. When the writer was in this attitude toward the postulates and deductions of Christian Science, he stayed there with little visible change for long years, and it seemed quite impossible for him to exclude acidity and ridicule from his remarks on the subject. To a person in this condition of thought it is often very difficult to convey any adequate or satisfying concept of the teaching of Christian Science. Did one ever see or try to see the really beautiful woman-profile in the full moon? Once discerned, it is a marvel to the percipient that all observers do not instantly recognize it as the most salient object in the lunar picture; yet the writer has known one to spend most of an evening describing and locating it to a lady who seemed very desirous to see it, and who endeavored to follow his every direction, but who at the end of the lesson regretfully declared that, to her vision, there was no sign of a definite outline in the lights and shadows of the unclouded disc.

The only point of this digression is the illustration of the fact that perception cannot be forced. To one the recognition of this revolutionary truth of Christian Science comes suddenly, to another very gradually, to others not at all, on this plane of consciousness; but, whether soon or late, it has to be "spiritually discerned" if discerned at all. Therefore any requirement that Christian Science shall recognize "the data of experience" (by which people mean, presumably, the impressions of our apparent commerce with an environment in which we appear to be immersed and which is characterized by suffering, pleasure, strife, beauty, squalor, fear, accident, lack, sin, decay, and death) faces the inquirer directly away from Science and effectually prevents his approximating its standpoint. Before any data can be safely laid down as a foundation for a structure of reasoning, their validity must be fully established, and by evidence other than that of the material senses, which constantly betray their own fallibility.

If we want to use the "data of experience" as a basis for inductive reasoning, we must first satisfy ourselves of their genuineness by deductive reasoning. Have we, now, any immovable hook on which to hang our deductive chain? Yes, surely; one, and but one, viz., God. The great majority of intelligent people are in agreement upon the statement that God is Spirit, Mind, Life, Truth, Love, eternal, infinite, omnipotent good, the only cause and creator. If that is so, it furnishes all a common and sufficient premise (and some of us have to go back to it for a fresh start a dozen times a day); and they have only to make sure that each successive deduction therefrom is correctly drawn, to be able to go as far as they like, without fear of finding some grisly giant of an antinomy disputing their path.

If God is infinite, He is not in the universe: the universe is in Him, or expresses Him; and there is nothing anywhere else, for infinity has no outside, and there is no such thing as finity or limitation. If God is the only cause and creator, "there can be no effect from any other cause" (Science and Health, p. 207), and without Him nothing exists. If God is Spirit, His creation must be purely spiritual, for every effect must correspond to its cause, and matter must be an erroneous concept. If God is Life, infinite and eternal, His negation, death, is inexorably excluded from the category of reality. If God is Truth, He knows and can know no untruth or falsity, and all that is of God is eternally true. If God is Love, He is ever-loving, and the envy, hatred, jealousy, wrath, etc., of human sense is forever removed from His consciousness and manifestation. If God is omnipotent, He is not merely the strongest among a plurality of powers, there can be absolutely no other power, either allied or opposed. If God is good, then nothing in His creation—the universe, including man—can be otherwise than good, and everything that is, not seems to be, is now and always good.

Now, if there is no fatal flaw in these deductions, we are ready to test in their light the "data of experience," these being largely experience of evil, limitation, sickness, decay, death, and all inseparably interwoven with matter. Are these latter, or any of them, the result or effect of Spirit? of Life? of Truth? of Love? of good? Can they or any of them really be, in the infinite presence in which the real man lives, moves, and has his being, and into which can enter nothing which defileth or worketh abomination or maketh a lie? If not, is there any place—necessarily outside of infinity—where they can really be? If not, again, does he talk "platitude" or "nonsense" who predicates their nonentity or unreality, and avers that they therefore can be obliterated, as all mistakes can be when detected and when the truth about the points involved is known? If those who thus aver find that, by holding steadfastly in thought the original proposition and its corollaries, they can, by this means alone, in the measure of their understanding, destroy discord and bring out harmony, objective and subjective, for themselves and for others, can they doubt the soundness of the Principle and rule by the conscious application of which they get their results?

All mankind groan and travail under a seeming tenthousand-ton weight of race beliefs, which appear to make it very hard to reach up to spiritual perception. That old apple, recommended to our earliest grandparents, has been constantly served up to all the generations, till men hardly know the taste of any other food. It was, and is, forbidden fruit. It is the knowledge of (belief in) good and evil, a false dualism which breeds antinomies. Its sponsor is described by a high and accurate authority as "a liar, and the father of it;" and again, as a liar in whom the truth is not. To get rid of the incubus of race beliefs one must sooner or later utterly renounce this diet of falsity, and rely for nourishment upon "every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." Then, and then only, will one be prepared to begin the accumulation of "data of experience" which, being of the nature of the headstone of the corner, can be trusted as the foundation upon which one may build as high as heaven, without danger that a phalanx of antinomies may intervene to confuse the builders and topple over the work.

All these elementary truths of Christian Science may perhaps only suggest a lot of questions, of the nature of those respecting which Emerson once said, "I am too young by some centuries to answer," and every truth-seeker is counseled to read thoughtfully and persistently the textbook of Christian Science, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, for that exposition and explication of Christian truth which is to-day proving its value by bringing health and happiness to unnumbered people all over the world. Meanwhile it is well to remember that when Mrs. Eddy made her stupendous find and then wanted to tell people about it, she had a difficult task to perform. She had a new spiritual story to tell, and nothing to tell it with but a language built up by erroneous thought for erroneous use. She had a lot of new wine of the very highest quality, and not a thing but old bottles to put it in. The writer used to laugh at her efforts before he found out the quality of the wine; but now, whenever he tries to do a little decanting himself, he marvels at the amount she was able to pour into those narrow-necked vessels without spilling. Now, this wine has stretched and straightened these old bottles quite a lot, and they look very queer to the pomologist, as they bulge with their new contents; all of which the average reader will come to understand more fully when perchance at no distant day he tries to phrase accurately for himself some of these facts of being.