Editorial August 3, 1912 Issue

"THY TESTIMONIES ARE VERY SURE"

John B. Willis

Every intelligent person has some sense of the significance of testimony to our asserted knowledge of the past, and to our judicial attitude toward men and movements to-day. In the administration of justice, in all civilized countries, it has ever been a determining factor, and it contributes very largely to the shaping of our opinions and convictions on well-nigh every subject which is not within the embrace of personal consciousness. Cumulative testimony not infrequently becomes so convincing that its rejection involves far more credulity than its acceptance, especially when concurrent evidence is supplied by those who are not in collusion, and who could not have given it had they been subject to hereditary impulse or been actuated by personal interest. All this is particularly true with regard to the historic data and the spiritual teachings of the New Testament. These have been accepted as true by millions of intelligent people, though there are no existing records dated prior to the fourth century, and though many of the events narrated are so strange and unusual as to be thought of as lying entirely without the plane of present demonstrability.

Proof is thus supplied us of the readiness of mankind to accept human statement, even when the most vital subject is at issue, and yet it is true that in our day some Christian people have shown the most obdurate disregard for the testimony which Christian Scientists have offered in support of the truth of the Master's explicit and oft-repeated statements. It is clear that those whose faith is so largely grounded in human testimony cannot consistently deny its worth, and the only explanation of their attitude toward the vast amount of testimony given by unquestionably sane and sincere Christian Scientists is found in that blinding religious prejudice which sealed the fate pharisaism and which has made the history of Christian progress so contentious and sanguinary.

The world has become so accustomed to religious prejudice, however, that its appearance seems less surprising than is the bearing of the representatives of empirical science, which has always been thought of as welcoming and giving due consideration to every ascertainable fact. This has been especially true of the so-called science of medicine. The asserted material panaceas for human ills have not been disclosed through revelation, nor have they been discovered through intuition; their values have always been based on experimentation, on testimony respecting test cases, and it was fair to assume that when any new means of relief was witnessed to by thousands and tens of thousands of people, physicians would follow the course of the truth-seeker with respect to them, instead of which they have, as a body, certainly treated them as of no value. This altogether self-contradictory and discreditable attitude assumed by many Christians, physicians, and physical scientists, has utterly failed of its purpose, and for the simple reason that the testimonies of God, of Truth and Love, "are very sure." He who has voiced demonstrable truth may rejoice in knowing that he has spoken for all time; that his word will be heard unto the ends of the earth, and that "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

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