Article December 10, 1910 Issue

Permit me to thank the vicar of Auckland for his letter...

Arthur E. Jennings—Aus.

South Durham and Auckland Chronicle,

Permit me to thank the vicar of Auckland for his letter in your last issue. The gospel of suffering has been emphasized by the opposition against the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science and her followers, and in this age Christian Scientists can explain what it means to drink the cup of our Lord. The point upon which the vicar does not seem clear is the teaching about the unreality of matter and evil. Paul declared, "We look not at the things which are seen. but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." This teaching we accept unreservedly, and it is true, because it is based upon the evidence of the spiritual senses.

All critics of Christian Science put themselves in the unenviable position of assuming that what we say is not common sense. Without referring to the emphatic declarations of our Master as to the allness of Spirit, here let me quote from the best schools of philosophic idealism. Fichte writes that "all things which we see or work with in this earth are as a kind of vesture or sensuous appearance." Huxley describes matter "as the unknown hypothetical cause of states of our own consciousness." Ostwald, who, by the way, received a Nobel prize, explains matter "as a thing of thought." Thus it will be seen that it is the wrong concept of matter that will change and not the thing itself. Paul made this quite clear when he said: "For if that which was done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious."

Another false and popular belief is that suffering is in matter: but it is in the human or carnal mind. One may not believe this, one may not have heard it before, but it is true, and we are proving every day that matter cannot think.

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