Editorial January 2, 1915 Issue

Veiled Verities

John B. Willis

Generally speaking, men are most reserved about believing in that which is most foreign to experience, and this is especially true if the statement or event brings into question the religious opinions they and their fathers have always accepted as true. It is therefore not at all surprising that the teaching of Christian Science respecting the unreality of that which seems most substantial, should prove a poser for what is wont to call itself hard common sense, but which in fact is common thoughtlessness or non-sense. To accept things as they appear requires no effort whatever, and when we remember how averse the average mentality is to any kind of purposeful activity, we come upon another reason why prevailing thought is so assertively persistent. Every one is willing to concede, however, that in all probability what he knows about things is but a small part of what is to be known about them, and this being granted, it need not surprise one to find that even a very little investigation proves the falsity of much of his past thinking. He thus awakens to the fact that only an illumined sense can bring to any phenomenon its true interpretation.

To illustrate: If one were to look at the music known as "America," he would have no difficulty in realizing that these queer black marks are merely signs which appeal to musical intelligence alone, and that they are utterly unlike the various tones for which they stand. Further, if thoughtful, he will realize that this step is only the first in his passage from the sign to the thing signified, and that there is a colossal distinction between noise and music. One's dog would hear all these varied tones, no doubt; nevertheless, for him "My country, 'tis of thee" would still have no existence. Furthermore, while a South Sea islander might revel in these tones, he, too, would have no idea whatever of what they mean to a wide-awake American. Not having had our thought experience, he cannot bring to it our interpretation of its meaning. By a kindred course of thought we must come to see that literature does not exist in books or bindings, nor in words or phrases, but only in cultured thought, in the consciousness of certain people.

We thus apprehend the fact that truth-knowing, all science, is interpretative. Today the physicists are thinking of objective phenomena in terms of force; and while they would not undertake to explain the latter, they are perfectly sure, and have made most others sure, that things are not at all what they seem; that the ultimate fact cannot be measured either with a yardstick or a pint cup. For them the materialstuff world has passed away. Christian Science honors this order of procedure, and passing from the physical to the metaphysical, presses the inquiry as to the nature of substance. It agrees with the physicist's negative declaration, but is not content to stop there. It insists upon a positive conclusion, hence it demands a positive premise. This is found in the teaching of Christ Jesus that God, the source and support of all being, is Spirit. The basic teaching of Mrs. Eddy is that if we would determine the nature of reality, things must be resolved into thoughts (see Science and Health, p. 123), and that cause and effect, Principle and idea, the supreme agent and the act, are in their nature one and inseparable.

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