Editorial July 15, 1911 Issue

"SPIRITUAL THINGS."

Annie M. Knott

The beginner in Christian Science is sometimes startled when he finds statements in the Bible which parallel those of the Christian Science text-book, but which he had never understood until he began to study the latter. An inquirer who attended a Christian Science service and listened to the reading of the eighth chapter of Romans, remarked at the close, "I see you have a new version of the Bible, arranged to harmonize with Mrs. Eddy's teachings." He was much surprised when told that he had been listening to the reading of the good old authorized version, as he took pains to discover, and yet, he said, it sounded quite different. His attention was then called to St. Paul's words (I Cor. ii, 12,13): "Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual."

From the very start the student of Christian Science learns to look away from material things to spiritual realities, and in so doing he finds health, holiness, happiness. If he has been ill, he awakens to the fact that he had not been following Paul's advice in respect to claiming "the things that are freely given to us of God," or in "comparing spiritual things with spiritual," but that he has on the contrary been accepting material evidence as to lost health, and been comparing himself with all material, perishable things, and as subject to the law of sin and death. The upward trend of thought when spiritual being is once recognized in Christian Science cannot be estimated by those who insist upon holding to the belief in man and the universe as material, and the permanence of this new mental state is assured for those who adhere unwaveringly to the Science of being and are not swayed by the winds and tides of personal sense or mere religious emotion.

The tendency of the mortal mind ever is to attempt to materialize the spiritual, a practice which is the very opposite of Christian Science, and which was one of the phases of error that led to temporary loss of Christ's Christianity. It has also tended to make thoughtful people suspicious of anything that borders on the miraculous. Some Christian writers (such as Trench) have, however, seen the great difference between the gospel narratives of healing which point so unmistakably to spiritual reality, and the later traditions which obscure the spiritual sense and leave thought submerged in materiality. With this before us we cannot be too faithful in following the counsel of our inspired Leader, "Look away from the body into Truth and Love, the Principle of all happiness, harmony, and immortality" (Science and Health, p. 261).

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