Article April 25, 1914 Issue

As a recent edition of Emanu-El, referring to Christian Science,...

Thomas F. Watson—San Francisco, Cal.

Emanu-El

As a recent edition of Emanu-El, referring to Christian Science, states that "according to that creed matter is nonexistent and an illusion of mortal mind," it may be said that Mrs. Eddy never taught that matter was unreal to the material senses. In Science and Health we read: "That matter is substantial or has life and sensation, is one of the false beliefs of mortals, and exists only in a supposititious mortal consciousness. Hence, as we approach Spirit and Truth we lose the consciousness of matter" (p. 278). The Bible declares, "For the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal."

Even some of the material scientists have disagreed as to the exact nature of what is called matter, some teaching that it is "an idea," others, "a mortal phenomenon," and still others, "a result of energy." Professor Ostwald, a great chemist and one of the leading scientific thinkers in Germany, stated some years ago in an address to a congress of material scientists, that "matter is only a thing imagined, which we have constructed for ourselves very imperfectly to represent the constant element in the changing series of phenomena."

The editor of Emanu-El commends the "courageous pastor" who discredits the "miraculous birth of Jesus," and then goes on to speak of the Christian Science superstructure, which, he says, "has been reared upon the absolute belief that Jesus was God." In her book, "Retrospection and Introspection," Mrs. Eddy says, "We do not question the authenticity of the Scriptural narrative of the Virgin-mother and Bethlehem babe, and the Messianic mission of Christ Jesus;" while in Science and Health she states, on page 361, that "Jesus Christ is not God, as Jesus himself declared, but is the Son of God. This declaration of Jesus, understood, conflicts not at all with another of his sayings: 'I and my Father are one,'—that is, one in quality, not in quantity. As a drop of water is one with the ocean, a ray of light one with the sun, even so God and man, Father and son, are one in being. The Scripture reads: 'For in Him we live, and move, and have our being.'"

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