Article July 31, 1909 Issue

Whether he is aware of it or not our critic flings overboard...

Frederick Dixon

Bridgwater (Somerset, Eng.) Mercury

Whether he is aware of it or not our critic flings overboard the whole teaching of the idealism of natural science as completely as the idealism of Christian Science. Materialism is the theory that matter is the only reality, and that mind is entirely dependent on it. Idealism, on the other hand, insists that matter is the subjective condition of mind. Now, if the teaching of idealism is true,—and some of the greatest thinkers in the world have been and are idealists,—it is obvious that all disease, organic, functional, or nervous, originates in the human mind, and that no system of medicine which ignores the mental cause and devotes itself to the subjective material effect has any claim to be regarded as science.

The idealism of Christian Science accepts the idealism of natural science as, relatively speaking, a true explanation of physical phenomena. But it insists that the human mind itself is only a negation, or counterfeit of the divine Mind, and consequently that, though the phenomena produced by it are, relatively speaking, true to the material sense, they are none the less, speaking absolutely, merely a misconception, or counterfeit, of the spiritual reality, and that, therefore, as Paul writes, "now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face," or, to reduce it to the less archaic phraseology of one of our greatest scholars, "now I see imperfectly in a mirror; then I shall see the reality."

In the Christian Science text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy has explained the spiritual idealism of Christ Jesus, and shown how the miracles were the object-lessons of this teaching, and how, just in proportion as the spiritual understanding of his teaching is regained today, the miracle or object-lesson becomes again possible in accordance with his promise, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also." Sickness, no less than sorrow and sin, she has explained, is the outcome of the human belief in the power and reality of evil: that is why Jesus said, "Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?" The one, as the other, must be conquered, therefore, by destroying the belief in the power and reality of evil. This can only be done by accepting Christ Jesus as the way, and by striving to walk in that way, or, as Paul put it, by endeavoring to "let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus."

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