Editorial July 17, 1909 Issue

TRUTH IS INTELLIGIBLE

John B. Willis

Christian Science rebukes the tendency to superficial thinking. Says our Leader, "We must ... take up ontology,—'the science of real being.' We must look deep into realism instead of accepting only the outward sense of things" (Science and Health, p. 129). As the result of its material handicap, human sense does not find this an easy thing to do; but it is imperatively demanded in Science, and herein lies the explanation of much of the indisposition and antagonism of mortal thought. To his disciples Jesus said, "It is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them [the indifferent outsiders] it is not given." So, too, St. Paul writes to the Ephesians that it was the purpose of God "to make all men see," through his preaching, "what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God," and he asks his faithful friends to pray that utterance may be given him, so that he may boldly "make known" this "mystery of the gospel."

Paul's Greek mustarion, makes it clear that he referred to the spiritual truths of the Christ-teaching respecting the nature of God and His manifestation, and of man and his dominion, which were revealed in the gospel and of which he was a God-appointed "steward." That these "deep things of God" are not mysteries in the sense of being incomprehensible or unintelligible, is made clear by the apostle's definite statement that they are to be understood and utilized by every Christian disciple.

Entirely in keeping with this teaching of the Master and of his great minister, Christian Science declares that spiritual truth is apprehensible, that we may so "know God" as consciously to enter upon the life eternal, and that this understanding may be utilized, as it was by Christ Jesus and his disciples, in the overcoming of sickness and sin, the solution of every human problem. In ancient Egypt and Greece the leaders of religious cults evidently not only consented to but encouraged the idea that much of the sacred teaching was reserved for the apprehension of the priestly class alone, and this idea still obtains to a pitiful extent even in the domain of Christian thought. That it tends to the advantage of the few and to the supersitious subserviency of the many, is manifest. Its degrading effect must have impressed St. Paul, and no doubt he was seeking to break the rule of this belief in his frequent references to the freedom-bringing power of the gospel, his insistence that every believer was to become a veritable priest unto God.

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