Article June 24, 1916 Issue

Our Text-book

PERCY PHILLIP VYLE

Nothing more clearly illustrates the complete reversal of thought which confronts the student of Christian Science, and the necessity of unlearning many things believed necessary in his material education, than a comparison of the educational value of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy with the thousands of text-books which attempt to solve the riddle of the universe while maintaining the reality of sense-evidence. Through the spiritual ideas expressed in this book the mystery surrounding God and His creation, including man, is solved, order is brought out of chaos, and the rule states for demonstrating the truth of being.

Scientifically speaking there has always been a rhythm and not a riddle of the universe. Mortal, misty thought created its own riddle and then side-stepped the issue. Our national library institutions are overflowing with books which attempt to peep behind the cloud of a material creation, of life in matter, and the ephemeral nature of these works is forcibly emphasized by the rebuke God gave to Job when he asked: "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? ... Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?" Had mankind applied the lesson to be learned from this rebuke, it would not have relied as it has upon material philosophy for an answer to its questions.

It was not until Mrs. Eddy startled the world with her ringing declarations, "The fading forms of matter, the mortal body and material earth, are the fleeting concepts of the human mind," and "All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation" (Science and Health, pp. 263, 468), that thought was turned from a material sense of creation to a spiritual creation. Instead of demonstrating the truth of the discovered idea and attuning itself therto, mortal mind has attempted to cling to its "words without knowledge;" but it was too late, for the provable statements in Science and Health compelled consent to the truth of the allness of God, Spirit, and spiritual causation began to permeate philosophy. Savants began to recognize the mental nature of all things, and during recent years the falsity of the human mind has been admitted in circles hitherto emphatically opposed to everything which did not spring from a materialistic basis. As Mrs. Eddy has said in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 361), "Christian Science has overshadowed all human philosophy, and being is understood in startling contradiction of human hypotheses; and Socrates, Plato, Kant, Locke, Berkeley, Tyndall, Darwin, and Spencer sit at the feet of Jesus."

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