Article September 17, 1910 Issue

THE LIMITED DEMONSTRATION

ELIZABETH MURDOCK.

After I had become thoroughly interested in the study of Christian Science, I remember that I read a Christian Science article which puzzled me very much. I have forgotten the rest of it, but I still remember distinctly the statement that puzzled me. It was this: "We should never outline a demonstration." Of course the obvious meaning of this was clear to me. I knew that we should not require that the desired good should come to us in just the way that we most desired, or even in what we really considered the best way. But still I felt that there was a deeper meaning in the words, which I failed to grasp. After returning to it again and again, sometimes even tempted to believe that the writer was mistaken, I finally decided to lay it away in my thought as the expression of a truth of value, which I hoped to understand later.

I have been doing a little mental house-cleaning lately, and during the process this statement has come to light again, and I have been working on it. In trying to answer the two questions that it suggests to me, What does it mean to outline a demonstration? and Why should we not do it? I let my thought dwell first on the meaning of outline. I knew that it meant to draw the outer boundary line of a thing, which would be to give it certain definite proportions and an exact form. As soon as this was clear to me, the thought came, Why, that is giving it limits, making it finite, is it not? This was immediately followed by, And in making it finite you make it material, do you not, since all that is finite is material? An affirmative answer to these questions was the only one possible, and I saw that I had defined the outlining of a demonstration. It was to make it finite and material.

Next I turned my attention to the meaning of demonstration. I remembered what a familiar word it used to be to me in the study of mathematics, and what a strong word it was. I recalled vividly the sense of satisfaction, and of a solid foundation under me, when, at the end of a course of reasoning, I was able to add, "which was to be demonstrated." I knew that, as applied to Christian Science, it must have the same strong meaning—the proving beyond the possibility of a doubt the proposition under consideration. And what is the proposition under consideration in Christian Science? Is it one, or many? I saw that in Christian Science there is but one proposition, and that the truth to be proved beyond the possibility of a doubt is the truth about God and man—that God is infinite Spirit, the only cause and creator, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and that man is made in His image and likeness.

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