Article February 22, 1908 Issue

THE TOWER OF BABEL

MARY J. LEAVITT.

We read in the Bible that certain men once said, "Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven." The word Babel is thus defined in the Christian Science text-book: "Self-destroying error; a kingdom divided against itself, which cannot stand; material knowledge. The higher false knowledge builds on the basis of evidence obtained from the five corporeal senses, the more confusion ensues, and the more certain is the downfall of its structure" (Science and Health, p. 581).

From time immemorial mortals have been engaged in the laborious but futile endeavor to reach heaven, harmony, through matter instead of Mind. Men have builded great cities, railroads, steamships, bridges, canals, and tunnels, that are marvels of human skill and genius; with cunning hand they have coaxed the lightning to do their bidding and made it subservient to their wants, till now with perfect ease they send messages around the globe, and talk to each other across a continent's vast expanse; every imaginable mechanical device has been invented wherewith to expedite and lessen labor, discoveries have been pushed to the remotest regions of the globe, and earth and seas have been explored and made to yield up their hidden treasures. So high have men builded on the basis of so-called material knowledge, that it would seem as though "nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do."

Probably in no other department of professional knowledge have there been greater efforts made to reach harmony than in the field of materia medica. Scattered over the earth to-day is a vast army of men and women who are devoting their time and talent to an effort to mitigate disease and suffering by material remedies. Many of them are philanthropists and undoubted humanitarians, but the "tower" that they are building is pagan in its origin and non-religious in its practice and theory. The numerous schools of medicine constitute a "confusion of tongues." agreeing with each other neither in diagnosis nor remedy. Built upon the false assumption that life, substance, and intelligence are in matter, medicine is a kingdom divided against itself, which sooner or later must totter to its fall.

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