Editorial July 15, 1911 Issue

CONSISTENCY AND CLEAR THOUGHT

John B. Willis

Christian Science honors God in its adherence to the logical requirements of the divine nature, infinite and immutable good. Maintaining that the law of the divine activity is constant and unfailing, Christian Science not only declares that the divine power is always available, but it refuses to accept any statement or belief about God which is inconsistent with His perfection in wisdom, power, and righteousness; and the shaping influence of this fundamental position is revealed in all that it teaches respecting that divine manifestation which constitutes the real universe, the natural world, in contrast with the seemings of material phenomena.

The tremendous importance of this discrimination between the world of Spirit and the world of matter appears when one notes the disastrous contradictions into which theological writers are led as a result of the failure to be scientific in their discussions of nature as an expression of God. Speaking of nature as "the oldest Bible," a very well known minister and theologian has recently said that "if St. Paul is right in declaring that 'the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead,' then nature is a medium of revelation, and we ought to prize it along with Isaiah and the gospels as one of the unveilings of the mind and heart of our heavenly Father."

This is certainly true if by "nature" we are to understand the manifestations of the immediate activity of Spirit, which must of course be spiritual and perfect, since God could not project or manifest His unlikeness. This brother makes it clear, however, in his further statements, that by nature he means the material universe, the basis, substance, and law of mortal life. It is of this "nature" therefore that he goes on to say: "Everything written in this ponderous volume is trustworthy and incontrovertibly authentic. ... With the making of the Bible man had a deal to do, and evidences of the imperfection and limitation are stamped upon its pages. But in the book of nature there is no blending of the divine and human; every sentence was written by the unassisted hand of the eternal."

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