Article February 13, 1915 Issue

A letter from "J. R. V." in the Union of recent date requires...

Judge Clifford P. Smith

The Springfield (Mass.) Union

A letter from "J. R. V." in the Union of recent date requires a concise statement of certain facts, and calls for a brief examination of the rule for the use of words which he has formulated for the restriction of Christian Scientists. There lately appeared at Springfield a gentleman who was announced as an "evangelist," or bearer of good tidings. While engaging public attention in this character, he delivered an attack on Christian Science and Christian Scientists. According to the published reports, most of his condemnation centered about the use by Christian Scientists of the word "Principle" as a synonym for God. One of his pronouncements was that God, as thus defined, would be "no more conscious than a stick or stone." Another was that Christian Scientists, for this reason, "worship a dead God," and he concluded by applying to them such epithets as "idolaters" and "Hottentots."

Your correspondent now attempts to justify all this as "free speech;" but I believe that your fair-minded readers will agree with me that the gentleman thus sought to be upheld should not have spoken as he did without first learning the ordinary meanings of the word upon which he pounced, nor without noticing the form and meaning of that word as used by Mrs. Eddy. Had he done this, he could hardly have spoken as he did; surely he could not, unless he was determined to speak ill of Christian Science anyway,—and that is not to be supposed.

In the larger dictionaries the primary meaning of the word "principle" is origin, source, cause, in the widest sense; that from which anything proceeds; fundamental substance; primordial substance. Lexicographers and authors have used this word when speaking of the source of life and consciousness in man; also when referring to the agent of the vital and conscious functions in man. For example, in Hastings dictionary of the Bible (p. 872), Spirit is spoken of as "the universal principle imparting life from the creator;" while in the "Popular and Critical Bible Encyclopedia" (Vol. III, p. 1606), soul is spoken of as "that active, vital principle in man which perceives, remembers, reasons, loves, hopes, etc." In short, the word "principle," as commonly used, does not necessarily denote something as dead a a stick or a stone; on the contrary, it express life and consciousness,—indeed, it is sometimes used as a synonym for Spirit, God.

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