Article August 29, 1914 Issue

Logic is not, I am afraid, Mr.—'s strong point, and...

Frederick Dixon

Wallasey (England) News

Logic is not, I am afraid, Mr.—'s strong point, and he illustrates this very completely in his—shall we call it—argument about the woman in the apocalypse. Mrs. Eddy, he explains, teaches that woman symbolizes generic man. Then he adds the playful comment, "Woman means man, man means God, black means white." Now, is it possible that this critic, in all that vast "erudition" which flies from the soldier at Waterloo to the schoolmaster of Auburn, and from the derivation of science from scio to the early church quarrels over a diphthong, has never known the word generic or man to be used to cover both sexes. Let me hasten to assure him the usage is quite common from the time of the Latin poets, and can even, in his own phrases, "be supported from Congregational, Baptist, and most hymnals." When he goes on to explain my ignorance over the words holy and wholly, and to explain that one is no more archaic than the other, his erudition becomes a little tiresome. The dictionary which revealed to him the fact that science is derived from scio, would, if he had pursued his researches, have revealed the further fact that the connection between the two words is more than what he means by alliterations.

Then the critic asks a question. "How," he demands triumphantly, "could Jesus preach the gospel of idealism of the New Testament before it was in existence?" How, indeed? one feels inclined to answer. Now, may I ask a question in turn? Why did Jesus speak of his "blood of the new testament" before it was in existence? and why was Paul guilty of the same error? May I point out that the idealism of the New Testament was Jesus' teaching, and that that idealism did not come into existence only when first it was written out by some one else and headed New Testament.

I have endeavored to find in this gentleman's letter some definite criticism of Christian Science to which to reply. I regret to say I have been unable to discover anything but the usual mass of unsupported assertions, almost smothered under the dragging in of pieces of miscellaneous information which really have nothing whatever to do with the subject. The method of argument employed by the critic may be, perhaps, tested by the fact that he writes, "Sickness is the product of bacteria, microbes, infection, chills, mosquitoes, improper food, etc." Now this may be all very true, but it does not affect the question in the very least degree. Suppose that sickness, for instance, is the result of microbes,—which will cover a good many other of the critic's causes,—the question arises, What are microbes? Christian Science, in common with the idealism of natural science, insists that they are a product of energy, or, as the Berkeleians would put it, a subjective condition of the human mind. Now, if this is so, the cause of the disease is not the microbe, but the mental condition which produces the microbe. The way, then, to destroy the sickness produced by the microbe, is to destroy the cause which produces the microbe; in other words, to bring about that repentance or change in the human mind which, when effectual, necessarily brings about a corresponding change in the subjective condition of that mind, namely, the human body.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

Logic is not, I am afraid, Mr.—'s strong point, and...

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access