Article November 15, 1913 Issue

An editorial in a recent issue calls attention to some statements...

Paul Stark Seeley—Vale, Ore.

Malheur Enterprise

An editorial in a recent issue calls attention to some statements by eminent surgeons attributing appendicitis to mental causes. Another statement by a physicist, who was quoted, avers that nothing exists but electrons, whose cause is mind. These quotions fairly illustrate a present-day tendency to assign material phenomena to a mental cause. Since the conclusions arrived at by these gentlemen were, by implication made akin to Christian Science, I ask permission to state what Christian Science teaches regarding matter, disease, and their origin.

For many ages the world's philosophers, investigators, and natural scientists have been trying to solve the riddle of the universe by assuming the reality of material things and then reasoning backward in the hope of finding some rational cause. The story of the man who tried to lift himself by his own boot-straps may perhaps be trite, but it well serves to show the utter futility of all attempts to explain a material universe while neglecting to take into account God and His spiritual nature. Christian Science, however, has chosen the course of reasoning laid down in the Bible, and has presented to mankind a system of religious teachings which begins with the simple premise stated by John, "God is love." From this fountain-source of infinite goodness it derives in its logical conclusions a practical Christianity which is today healing, purifying, and making glad many thousands of human sufferers in the four corners of the globe.

Since God is Love, He can be only good, and His love and goodness can be expressed only by Mind, even by the divine Mind, which is but another name for God. The divine Mind is everywhere; for what can limit intelligence? God must then include in His infinite nature all intelligence, wisdom, and power. There can be no other creator or creation, for God's all-inclusiveness and self-completeness makes a second power or creator an impossibility. As there is but one creator, there can be but one creation, similar in its nature to its cause, even to God, whom Jesus said is Spirit. His creation, therefore, is the spiritual universe and spiritual man, perfect and complete. And here it is of interest to note that in the account of the spiritual creation in Genesis, man is made in God's image and likeness. More than four thousands years later John reaffirms the statement by the declaration, "Now are we the sons of God." It is therefore plain that Christian Science has ample Biblical authority for its teaching that God is Spirit, expressed only by the spiritual universe and spiritual man. But because Christian Scientists realize in some measure the reality of spiritual things, they do not treat with indifference the troubles of suffering humanity. Rather are they showing by their works the truly scientific way for mankind to find release from mortal bondage.

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