Editorial June 5, 1909 Issue

WARPED WORLDLY WISDOM

John B. Willis

In a recent address before a gathering of physicians, one of America's foremost educators, while speaking of the requirements now laid upon the medical profession, is reported to have said: "Another combat to be urged is that of scientific progress toward new knowledge, not the supernatural but the natural way, and it is for the medical profession to give warning against the new superstitions. Knowledge is by observation, and scientific study is the kind required."

This statement was manifestly aimed at the effort to realize by non-material means the end and purpose of the medical profession. It is a seemingly fair and logical phrasing, but it fails to make any definite statement while bringing to thought a legion of intimations.

The plea for progress is always an appealing one, and the declaration that it can be realized only as "new knowledge" is gained would be passed as a mere matter of course were it not for the fact that the nature and source of the "knowledge" referred to raises instant question. That it is not the knowledge of God which Christ Jesus declared to be "life eternal," and upon which Mrs. Eddy has called all men to rely for the solution of human problems, is apparent, since it is to be secured in the "natural way," by which the speaker evidently meant the way of physical investigation and conformity to material law. It is not to come by way of revelation or spiritual perception, since these channels are evidently classed as "supernatural," or in other words, superstitious! Thus to exalt the testimony of material sense and count down and out all that spiritual intuition stands for, certainly does not witness to great breadth of view, nor does it honor many of the most inspiring facts of human history, and yet this is precisely what many Christian ministers, as well as Christian physicians and physicists, are doing. The assumption that physical science is the place "whence cometh wisdom," and that human sovereignty is dependent upon its expansion, is a colossal mistake which finds its antipode in the declaration of Christian Science that "Christianity and the Science which expounds it are based on spiritual understanding, and they supersede the so-called laws of matter" (Science and Health, p. 274). This is the parting of the ways, the place where Christian Science takes its unequivocal stand for "the wisdom that is from above," and teaches that a knowledge of spiritual things is essential to all real progress.

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