Article November 14, 1914 Issue

Christian Science being primarily concerned with religion...

L. H. Jones—Louisville, Ky.

The Courier-Journal

Christian Science being primarily concerned with religion, when it speaks of reality it means reality in the ultimate metaphysical sense in which all religious truths are to be taken. It does not mean that the objects of material nature, with their supposed laws of sin, sickness, and death, do not exist as phenomena of the human consciousness, where they appear very real to us, —painfully real at times; nevertheless, being products of the erring human mind they can be destroyed, like other errors, by knowing the truth; as Jesus said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

Paul tells us that sin, sickness, and death are products of the human or carnal mind. Sin, he says, brought death into the world, and sickness, we know, is the means by which sin or death accomplishes its end. Therefore he tells us that "to be carnally minded is death." To be carnally minded means simply to have a carnal consciousness of life or being, to make a reality of carnal existence, to believe in the reality of carnal or material things. Again he says: "They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded [that is, to mind fleshly things, to make a reality of them] is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be."

In another place Paul calls the carnal mind the "natural man," that is, the human mind or man, and says it cannot know "the things of the Spirit of God." Now, a man or mind that cannot know "the things of the Spirit of God," cannot know anything, and is neither mind nor man, for all that is proceeds from God, and God is Spirit. The knowing capacity of such a mind or man is nothing. Would God create a man or mind that could not know Him or His, that is in essential and irredeemable enmity against Him? Paul says that such a man cannot by any possibility become "subject to the law of God." Would God create a "kingdom divided against itself"? Why should good Christian ministers be so eager to make God responsible for a carnal or human consciousness which is the source of all evil, sin, sickness, and death, when even pagan philosophers and the ablest scientists and philosophers of modern times unite in declaring that in reality no such man exists?

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