Article April 26, 1919 Issue

Truth versus False Belief

FRANCIS E. CADY

Few persons who criticize Christian Science for calling attention to sin, sickness, and death as false beliefs realize to what extent their individual experience is affected by that which they know is not true. For instance, every intelligent person knows that the earth revolves upon its own axis and that the phenomena of day and night are the result of this motion; and yet the false belief that the sun rises in the morning, moves to the zenith, and then down to the horizon again is a factor which regulates more or less all human activities.

The farmer knows that his day's work must be under way when, to his sense, the sun rises; when, as he thinks, the sun has reached the highest point in the heavens, he stops work for dinner; and the setting sun is a signal for cessation of the day's labor. In a similar way the storekeeper, the lawyer, the housewife, and the schoolboy all carry on their daily routine of work according to a schedule based on what they speak of and think of, unless questioned, as the movement of the sun in the heavens. Even the astronomer finds a great deal of his home life and much of the time in his office similarly controlled; but when the astronomer begins to study the facts regarding the heavenly bodies and to ascertain the truth of their relations and the laws governing their movement, he instantly and probably quite unconsciously replaces the false belief that the sun moves, with the scientific fact that it is the earth which moves. He knows that the explanation of every observed phenomenon must be in harmony with this scientific fact, and any apparent explanation contrary thereto is seen to be erroneous and is consequently rejected.

A very common false belief is that of the absence of God, yet from the earliest times the Bible has taught God's nearness; but how little this vital truth is realized and applied in the daily experience of even the most devout Christians. How often in the course of their ordinary business or social activities do people stop to think of the presence of God? Do they not as a rule, consciously or unconsciously, conduct their affairs as if He were a long way off and only near when called upon? Christian Science emphasizes the inseparability of God and man and teaches that this spiritual fact is fundamental to a proper solution of the problem of being, and that anything not in consonance with this fact is a lie and hence unreal.

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