Editorial August 10, 1912 Issue

ONLY ONE WAY

Archibald McLellan

On pages 359 and 360 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy makes two contrasting statements, which purport to express the views of a Christian Scientist and of an opponent of this teaching. In these two sayings she draws the line clearly between the thought of one who seeks Truth at whatever cost, and of another who is unwilling to depart from "old doctrines or human opinions," and she then asks of her reader, "Which mind-picture or externalized thought shall be real to you,—the material or the spiritual?" Jesus said, "No man can serve two masters," and emphasizing this necessity of making a choice, Mrs. Eddy continues: "Both you cannot have. You are bringing out your own ideal. This ideal is either temporal or eternal. Either Spirit or matter is your model. If you try to have two models, then you practically have none. Like a pendulum in a clock, you will be thrown back and forth, striking the ribs of matter and swinging between the real and the unreal."

While this question and the explanation which follows it seem to be addressed to the person who is reading Science and Health for the first time, Christian Scientists will make a great mistake if they do not keep the idea which is therein expressed well to the front in solving the problems they must solve if they are to win that "prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus," of which Paul wrote to the church at Philippi. It is also well to note that as a preliminary thereto, he was "forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before."

The experience of a Christian Scientist is in one sense a series of temptations to believe as he had formerly believed,—that materiality is real and normal and spirituality unreal and abnormal; that the pains and pleasures of sense are the alpha and omega of mortal existence while it lasts, and that this temporal existence is to be followed by another in which mortals become immortals. It is also a series of temptations to believe that he must not be "so shockingly transcendental" in his ways and mode of life as to run counter to the views of those who would accept Christian Science if it were modified in some measure, or if the name of Mrs. Eddy were omitted. As to this Mrs. Eddy has said, "The author has not compromised conscience to suit the general drift of thought, but has bluntly and honestly given the text of Truth" (Science and Health, Pref., p. x); and Christian Scientists may well bear this in mind when tempted to compromise with or concede something to those whose pride of opinion demands "less self-abnegation." All these temptations are but wiles of the one evil to lure us from our new-found faith and hope and entangle us in the meshes of our former beliefs,—the things which are to be forgotten as we reach out for that "better hope ... by the which we draw nigh unto God."

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