Article November 6, 1909 Issue

Great as was the intellectual change wrought by the...

Frederick Dixon

Bedford (Eng.) Circular

Great as was the intellectual change wrought by the renascence, it made no outward difference in men's views of miracles. The first change came when, with the advent of rationalism, men began to cast ridicule on them. And it was then that Hume committed himself to that famous and unfortunate definition of one, as "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity." The inherent fallacy of this definition was pointed out by Huxley in his own luminous way. A violated law, he showed, had ceased to be a law; and if, to take Hume's own example, a man saw a lump of lead suspended without visible support in the atmosphere, so far from proving a violation of law, it would prove, on the contrary, evidence of a hitherto unsuspected law, which it would be more intelligent to examine than to ignore. That is exactly the position in which Christian Science healing stands to natural science today; and natural scientists would be better advised in taking Huxley's advice than in joining orthodox theology in smiling.

The fact is that Jesus, who, as Mrs. Eddy says, was not only the best man but the most scientific man that ever trod the globe (Science and Health, pp. 52, 313), met and overcame natural science and scholastic theology by his demonstration of Christian Science, and in bringing Christian healing to the sick man and the sinner today Christian Scientists are striving to walk in his footsteps. The natural scientist maintains that science is confined to secondary causes, or physical facts, and smiles at the recital of Christian Science healing or attempts to account for it in some other way. His whole attitude is an unscientific one, for if you declare in advance that nothing can be known of spiritual causation, nothing ever will be to you.

The theologian, on the other hand, declares that the miracles were performed, but the power was supernatural, and was confined to Jesus and his disciples. This position is even more hopeless than the other. On two recorded occasions Christ Jesus, speaking not of the disciples, but of the world, not of that age, but for all time, declared that those who believed on him would be able to do the works, the miracles he had done. These passages occur in the last chapter of Mark and the 14th chapter of John, while finally, in the last of his recorded words, he commanded the disciples to teach all the nations "to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." If the miracles of healing were not among the things commanded, it would be difficult to say what were.

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