Article January 18, 1913 Issue

In an interesting editorial today on "Good Cheer," you...

Paul S. Seeley

Portland (Ore.) Oregonian

In an interesting editorial today on "Good Cheer," you dwell at some length upon the methods adopted by the Roman Stoics, the primitive monks, and Epicurus, in order to secure for themselves this desirable state of mind. In your further discussion of the subject, and its relation to the teachings of Mrs. Eddy with regard to the attainment of happiness, you write: "Her rule was to treat matter and its belongings as non-existent theoretically. In practise this amounts to about the same thing as the old Stoic doctrine of living indifferent to material happenings, perhaps, but she gave it great vitality by making it a part of a religious cult."

I am glad you used the word "perhaps" to qualify your statement of the relation between the teachings of Christian Science and Stoicism. In truth there is no relationship between the two systems of thought. Mrs. Eddy's writings do teach that matter is non-existent, not merely in the realm of theory, but that as a practical every-day problem, the laws of matter, the temporal and the finite, may be overcome and destroyed by the realization of spiritual truth, the law of eternal being. This, however, does not amount to or have any connection with the doctrine of the Stoics, who tried to live indifferent to material happenings.

Mrs. Eddy has discerned with a clear vision that now and in the eternity of time there is but one God, and she has accepted the teachings of the Bible that God is Spirit, divine Love. She has faced the dilemma of explaining the existence of both good and evil by showing that evil, matter and all its accompaniments, ignorance, fear, sin, and sickness, are no part of God's universe, and therefore have no real existence, for God is good and He is All. In this way alone does Mrs. Eddy point the way to "good cheer." The stolid indifference of the Stoics to material conditions, while failing to recognize them as temporary phenomena, the withdrawal of the primitive monks from one worldly condition into another, or the vain attempt of Epicurus and his followers to find happiness in a sense of mental pose and equilibrium, without knowledge of the vital Principle and underlying cause of all life, have no attraction for the individual who has learned from the study of Mrs. Eddy's teachings that God is only good, and that as we keep our minds filled with Truth and Love, sin, disease, and death cannot find entrance.

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