Article November 25, 1911 Issue

In a recent issue the writer of the "Finance of the Week"...

Frederick Dixon—London, England.

Outlook

In a recent issue the writer of the "Finance of the Week" explains that the world is learning that financial panics are not to be cured by Christian Science. Will you permit me to say that I have serious doubts whether he himself knows exactly what he means? If by Christian Science he means that to declare a panic does not exist, when to the human senses it obviously does exist, he is simply stating that, like very many other people, he knows really nothing of the meaning of Christian Science. Now, Christian Science is the only thing that ever will overcome financial panics, for the simple reason that it is the only teaching which will destroy the causes in which panics originate. It may be said, roughly, that panics arise from fear, sometimes genuine, sometimes groundless, according as they are caused by improper financial methods or by mere ignorance or malice. It is impossible in the length of a letter to go into the question of Christian Science teaching on so large a scale. It must suffice to point out that it is the object of Christian Science to show people how they may learn to live so as to grow more and more into a mental at-one-ment with divine Principle. It may be said that all religious systems have this aim, and have all alike failed. But it is precisely because they have worked on an emotional rather than on a scientific basis that this has been the case. Appeals from the pulpit to the emotions of a congregation are very powerful at the moment, but they commonly cease to have any effect within a few hours. Christian Science, on the other hand, is the attempt to show men that there is an absolutely scientific Principle in religion, and that as this scientific Principle is realized, its effects are far more definite than those produced by obedience to the laws of natural science.

A scientific knowledge of God is necessarily the most absolute knowledge of Truth available, and Christian Science teaches that it was this absolute knowledge of Truth which Jesus strove, through his teaching, to impart to the world. In this way the miracle became exactly what the Greek words translated "miracle" would imply, the object-lesson in proof of the accuracy of his theology. The miracle was devoted largely, but not entirely, to physical healing, apparently because Jesus saw that, constituted as the world was, the attempt to help it could best be made on that basis. The consequence was that when the disciples of John came to inquire of him if he were the Christ, it was to these works of physical healing that he mainly referred them, but he wound up with the statement, "to the poor the gospel is preached." Now the poor obviously were not alone those who enjoyed less of the world's goods than their neighbors. There was no class of men who needed the gospel more than the scribes and Pharisees. The poor were those who were ignorant of Truth, who had not acquired in any degree a scientific knowledge of God, any degree of that knowledge of Truth which was to lead them into all Truth.

Christian Science is simply the teaching of Jesus made practical for the world today, and as through its teaching the world learns more of absolute Truth, and so gains a more scientific knowledge of God, it will learn to destroy mentally the very causes in which financial panics originate. But no one, except some people with a very quaint notion of what constitutes Christian Science, believes that Christian Science attempts to heal the sick by simply telling a sick man that he is not sick, or assuring a man in the midst of a financial panic that there is no panic. Such absolutely unrelated opinions would be about as valuable as telling a man who knew nothing of evolution that his remote ancestor was a jellyfish, or telling a man who knew nothing of natural science that his body consisted of nothing but a series of vibrations.

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In a recent issue the writer of the "Finance of the Week"...

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