Article March 23, 1912 Issue

The fundamental difficulty which many appear to labor...

William J. Bonnin

Rochdale (Eng.) Times

The fundamental difficulty which many appear to labor under in reference to Christian Science, is the conviction that the evidence of the senses is evidence of actual truth. In other words, they appear to be unable or unwilling to grasp the Christian Science teaching that, while to the material consciousness material things are true and spiritual things untrue, so to the spiritual consciousness the things of the Spirit are true and material things untrue; and that, since these two witnesses are mutually exclusive and destructive, only one of them can be a witness to absolute Truth. One must be wholly true and the other wholly false. Christian Science affirms that the testimony of the spiritual senses is true and that of the material senses false, when judged by the standard of absolute Truth, seen, as it were, from the point of view of the divine Mind. And here it may be pointed out that if we change that standard for the standard which the material consciousness recognizes, we may speak of the relative truth and falsity of concepts without in any way interfering with the fact that the very employment of such false standard ensures its values being wrong when tested by the true one. And this difference in standards is what is lost sight of by those who endeavor to be humorous at the expense of the propositions of Christian Science.

And so it is that the question of consciousness has always been one of prime importance in Christian Science. For Christian Science has this message for the race—that it is possible to cultivate and develop a spiritual consciousness and to begin, as a consequence, here and now to enjoy the fruits of the Spirit; possible now to prove the evidence of the human, material senses to be temporal, unreal, false; possible now to begin as Christian to demonstrate that God, good, is omnipotent, and that the supposititious counterfeit power of evil may be destroyed by the knowledge of Truth.

It will be seen that it is only by a change of consciousness that the spiritual truths of Christian Science are unfolded. The manifestations of evil begin in that process to reveal their nothingness. Imagine a person with no acquaintance with music having to listen to a Beethoven symphony. It would probably be a jarring discord to him. After a musical education the same performance becomes a delightful harmony to him. Where has all the discord gone? Did it ever exist except as a false concept of a lying consciousness? The harmony was there all the time. And that is how evil may be overcome with good. We may know that evil is but the expression of ignorance of the truth, just as darkness is an expression of the absence of light; and as we may know that as not all the darkness in the world can extinguish a taper light, so too we may know that not all the false evil of the world can destroy a single ray of truth.

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