Article May 15, 1915 Issue

The True Preventive

CLARENCE W. CHADWICK

Much is being said at the present time about preventive medicine. It is a subject which Christian Scientists are interested in, and one concerning which they will have something to say before the present discussion is ended. They are glad to see human thought emerging from the troublesome dream of life in matter. They, however, will not permit any half-way position in dealing with this subject of prevention, for the quest for knowledge must extend far enough to take hold of spiritual causation before it can find the true preventive.

The belief in the reality and substantiality of matter is one of the great failures of human existence. Old and young, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, have played with it for centuries, and it has failed them one and all. It has made fair promises but has not fulfilled them. It has held out innumerable inducements but has signally failed to do what it promised. Still humanity is loath to forsake it, and would, after centuries of the most heartrending disappointments and disastrous failures, even try to find somewhere within its crumbling depositories a preventive for the very difficulties for which the belief in matter is responsible. If matter has failed for centuries to solve the perplexing problems of mortal existence, the belief in it must be a mistake and not the truth of being. This point is conceded outside of Christian Science.

Christian Science is on earth today to arouse slumbering humanity from its age-ridden dream in the reality of matter, and to turn its thought into channels of spirituality whence emanates all good. Ask any Christian as to the source of everything that is good, and he will acknowledge that it proceeds from God, who is Spirit, according to Christ Jesus. But the chances are that the one questioned does not understand spiritually what is meant by his admission. Not knowing that Spirit and matter are opposites, he is wont to think that God expresses Himself through matter. Believing thus, it is perfectly consistent for him to pay homage to matter and to try to get the most out of it. Only when failure after failure stares him in the face is he willing to let Christian Science instruct him in the "more excellent way."

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Reason and Revelation
May 15, 1915
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