Article September 11, 1909 Issue

Of course if one were satisfied with misstating another...

Frederick Dixon—Surbriton, Eng.

Surbriton Times

Of course if one were satisfied with misstating another person's premises, there is no particular reason why one should not reduce their conclusions to a reductio ad absurdum. That is what our critic has done; and this, if you like, is unscientific. He says, for instance, that Mrs. Eddy would argue that if you lived over a cesspool, and imagined there was no cesspool, you would never suffer from typhoid. Now this is sheer nonsense; it is the kind of reasoning indulged in by all critics who argue from sentences cut out of contexts. What Mrs. Eddy has said is this, that all physical phenomena are the subjective condition of what she terms mortal mind, or of what the scientific idealist commonly terms energy; consequently, that physical disease is the result of a mortal-mind belief, that is, of believing in a physical law. The question therefore resolves itself into the understanding of law.

Mrs. Eddy maintains that mortal mind is itself an unreality, is indeed nothing but a negation of the divine Mind which we term God; and that the physical laws which are the product of this mortal mind are therefore only a human misconception of spiritual law. Now, speaking scientifically, a law is that in which there is no variation, and if a variation is observable there is no law. Jesus broke every physical law; it is certain, therefore, not only that the physical law is not God's law, but that it is not even law; that is, that a variation in it is possible. The fact is that he healed the sick and raised the dead, not by breaking God's law, but by the strictest conformity to it. What he did break was the human sense of law which breeds typhoid out of cesspools. So long as men believe that physical causation is governed by law they will be subject to that law; but when they learn that the only law is God's law, then, though they walk through the valley of the shadow of death, they will "fear no evil." The only true thing that can be said of evil is that it is a lie, and the only semblance of power it can ever manifest is the illusion produced by being deceived by a lie.

Christian Science, it may be said finally, is the effort to give the world that magnificent trust in God, that complete understanding of divine law, which made the first century of the Christian era the age of miracles; and just exactly in proportion as one acquired this trust and this understanding, he gains a knowledge of the truth; he knows, in the words of Jesus, the truth, and the truth makes him free.

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