Article July 4, 1908 Issue

The criticism in question, like a vast majority of the...

Frederick Dixon—London, England.

The Mystic

The criticism in question, like a vast majority of the same nature, touches lightly on several aspects of Christian Science before proceeding to its main generalization. The mental attitude of the writer appears to have been rather like that attributed by the great Lord Verulam to Pilate, when he said that he asked what truth was, "but did not stay for an answer." Such a method is particularly difficult to cope with, as may be seen by examining the present example. This critic begins by the statement that "the basic principle of Christian Science is the non-existence of matter." No teaching, however, was ever based on a negation. The fundamental teaching of Christian Science is the allness of God,—that is, of Spirit,—and the unreality of matter is a deduction from this.

Like a bee in a garden, the critic then flits to the weight of evidence necessary to sustain this contention, hovering for a moment on the Berkeleian philosophy on his way. Then he flies away to the questions of quack medicines and miraculous healing, and in another second to dentistry and thence to surgical aid. By this time it must have become manifest to his readers that he has raised half a dozen issues, any one of which would require an article if it were to be scientifically and intelligently dealt with. Then, deserting suddenly this part of the garden altogether, the bee sails away to a new quarter, and, I regret to say, at the same time develops his sting. The Preacher declared that "there is no new thing under the sun." and it cannot be pretended that this critic's main objection to Christian Science affects the truth of that saying in any way. It resolves itself into nothing but an attempt to judge a religion by his own conception of certain of its exponents. It is quite true, as he says, that Christian Scientists believe that what is described in the Epistles as the full, exact knowledge of God,—the scientific knowledge, that is, of Truth,—as taught by Christ Jesus, is the only perfect religion; but it does not imply that they consider themselves perfect exponents of it. They do not in the least claim to be better than their neighbors; they claim, emphatically, that they themselves are much better than they were.

It would be easy, so easy that it is not worth while, to deluge the critic with an historical reductio ad absurdum of his argument. It must suffice to say that if the truth of the ethics preached in religion and philosophy is to be impeached on the ground of the failure of the believers in those ethics to live fully up to them, religion and philosophy would be in as perilous a condition as science would be if the failure to demonstrate all its hypotheses was to be regarded as fatal to its pretensions.

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