Article February 12, 1910 Issue

THE TRUE VIEW OF MAN

EDWARD C. BUTLER.

Sir Francis Bacon, who flourished in the sixteenth century, was a mental giant but a moral pigmy, and "pigmies are pigmies still, though perched on Alps," says Pope. The stupendous so-called intellect of Bacon, which elevated him to the distinction of father of inductive philosophy, did not save him from moral recklessness and wreckage. Had Bacon deduced man from God, instead of reasoning from a part to the whole, he would not have entertained the erroneous premise upon which he built wrong conclusions. For instance, he said that there were three ways of looking at a man: the way God looks at him, the way his neighbors look at him, and the way he looks at himself. As a matter of fact, Christian Science shows us but one way of looking at a man: the way God looks at him.

In the Christian Science text-book Mrs. Eddy urges the true deductive philosophy that must sooner or later revolutionize the thought of the world, the thought said to be born in the human brain. Mortals may have a big belief of brain, but, according to Christian Science, the claim that somebody thinks blinds men to the fact that there is but one Mind, God, and consequently only one real thinker and thought, the unique, all-inclusive "infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation," because "the allness of Deity is His oneness" (Science and Health, pp. 468, 267). The manifest fact is that matter cannot think, and this disposes of the human brain, except as a belief of a thinking machine. Such being the case, one mortal cannot have an original thought about another, nor can he have an original thought about himself.

Since God, Mind, does all the real thinking, there is but one way of looking at a man, namely, the way God looks at man; and Mrs. Eddy explains that it was by looking away from mortal evidence that Jesus healed the sick and the sinning. It follows, then, that if we would pattern after our divine Exemplar, if we would break the yoke of bondage and lift the heavy burdens from the sinning and suffering ones of earth, we must do so in the reflection of the divine, and only the divine understanding. As God understands man, so he is,—like Himself,—perfect, despite the errors of human belief. Sin, sickness, and death may seem to pertain to man, but God is never conscious of evil in His creation. Christian Science constantly urges us to accept and be governed by the divine sense, to separate error from our concept of man, our true selfhood. When tempted to personalize evil, let us pray to God for grace to grasp the divine understanding,—the tender touch of pardoning Love.

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