Article November 8, 1919 Issue

The 'testimony of common sense" is a stock phrase of...

John M. Dean

in Memphis (Tenn.) Commercial Appeal

The 'testimony of common sense" is a stock phrase of those who decry any teaching which does not conform to popular notions, and must have been what Paul had in mind when he said, "The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God." Reliance on the evidence of the physical senses holds out no promise for the salvation of man, and it is only as men rise above sense testimony into the realm of spiritual things that they can cognize what Paul terms "the evidence of things not seen." Paul also said, "The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh," and throughout the Bible the things of the flesh receive merited condemnation. Religionists who hold to the flesh (matter), zealously arguing for all its boasted claims, are at the same time contending that God, Spirit, is something less than almighty.

To say that Christian Science is pantheism while at the same time admitting that Christian Scientists deny that statement, is to charge Christian Scientists with being either less intelligent or less honest than this critic,—a charge which I am sure his modesty would deter him from making intentionally. For his information, however, let it be said that Mrs. Eddy deemed this a question of such importance that she at one time wrote a special Message to The Mother Church entitled "Christian Science vs. Pantheism," and no thinking person can read this Message and honestly conclude that Christian Science is anything but the exact opposite of pantheism.

No doubt the critic will concede the truth of the statement in Genesis that God's work was "finished," and that He pronounced it "very good;" also that declaration in the first chapter of John, "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made." If he will acknowledge the truth of these sayings, I respectfully submit that his jealous regard for the real entity of sin and disease has no ground left to stand upon—not that these things do not appear terribly real to the mortal, human sense of things. It must be apparent that if God never made them, they have no reality beyond that attached to them by prevalent wrong thinking; while to assert that He did make them is to charge Him with creating all evil and involves a contradiction of Scripture, and therefore of both reason and revelation.

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