Article September 11, 1915 Issue

Point of View

CAMPBELL MAC CULLOCH

Individuals who are beginning the study of Christian Science not infrequently find difficulty in reconciling the presence of sin and evil in the world with the creation of a perfect man and a perfect universe by an infinitely good God, and they generally want to be informed as to where and how evil originated and how the originally perfect man fell from his state of created perfection. Coupled with this is the further question, If God is infinitely good, how could He, or why did He, create a man capable of sinning?

These questions are not particularly novel, for they are precisely those which confronted the early Christian church and resulted in the Gnostic controversy of the first three centuries. They are wholly due to an illogical point of view, to the putting of an effect before a cause, or to the supposition that because a thing seems to exist it must of necessity have had a cause. During all the ages humanity has pursued this course, and modern education seems to be largely predicated upon it, with the result that one of the chief difficulties with which Christian Science has to contend is the establishment of a correct view-point.

Philosophers and investigators in the realm of causation have generally begun their reasoning with the admission of the existence of what they have termed a series of well-established and incontrovertible facts, and from these they have reasoned backward in the endeavor to find a cause which might satisfactorily account for them. The flaw in this type of reasoning is that the starting-point is fallacious, and consequently every subsequent step must be equally at fault. All such reasoning has been based upon the alleged reality of material phenomena, a predication no longer admitted by competent thinkers and no longer taught in the higher schools of education.

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