Article May 23, 1908 Issue

It is alleged that "Science and Christian Science are...

Frederick Dixon—Bournemouth, Eng.

Observer and Chronicle

It is alleged that "Science and Christian Science are not very reconcilable terms." Now either this is a mere truism or it is a fallacy. If the statement is intended to convey the suggestion that physical science and Christian Science are not synonymous terms, it is a mere truism, as obvious as the fact that neither is physical science synonymous with the sciences either of metaphysics or harmony. If, however, it is intended to convey the suggestion that there is no such thing as a Science of Christianity, it is equally obviously fallacious, as can be proved.

Christianity is undoubtedly the teaching of Jesus with respect to God; that is, with respect to absolute truth. the Now the writers both of the Epistle to the Colossians and of the general Epistle of Peter make use of an expression which, though translated "knowledge of God," should, of course, be full, exact, that is, scientific knowledge of God. Again, the subtlest of the medieval thinkers, Huxley once hazarded, was Thomas Aquinas, and Aquinas laid it down in the "Summa," that the science of theology, tht is, of the Word of God, was the only one absolute science. Again, one of the greatest Grecians and churchmen of the last century was Dr. Westcott of Durham, and he, speaking of Pilate's famous question, draws an emphatic distinction between the Greek phrase used by the Roman and the phrase used by Jesus, showing that while the former referred to a mere relative sense of truth, the latter was intended to express absolute truth. Here then you have the principal writers of the New Testament, the greatest, perhaps, of the medieval thinkers, and one of the most brilliant of modern scholars claiming that spiritual truth is the most absolute, the most exact, and consequently the most scientific form of knowledge in the world. No wonder that Jesus said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." "The freedom of the individual," writes West-cott, "is perfect conformity to the absolute—to that which is. Intellectually, this conformity is knowledge of the truth: morally, obedience to the divine law." . . .

The idealism of Christian Science is not, it can never be affirmed too strongly, the idealism of the natural scientist working out in hypnotic suggestion. It is the idealism of Jesus, the idealism of the Sermon on the Mount, as opposed to the idealism of the serpent as preached in Eden. The one is based on the fact of the allness of God, that is, of good, the other on the supposititious existence of evil as a power. Physical existence as perceived by the material senses is nothing but that subjective condition of mortal mind or energy which the philosophic idealist accepts as the actual, but which the Christian Scientist realizes is a mere negation. So long as the human consciousness is lulled in this Adam dream of life in matter, there does exist for it a relative sense of truth working out in a supposed law of contraries, but as man wakes out of this dream he grasps the hem of Christ's garment, the absolute truth, and the Sermon on the Mount passes from the realm of transcendental mysticism to the stern practice of daily life.

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