Article September 6, 1919 Issue

It is just as impossible for our clerical critic to render...

Willis D. McKinstry

The Blue Rapids (Kan.) Times

It is just as impossible for our clerical critic to render invalid the teachings of Christian Science through his erroneous statements and arguments based upon popular Christianity, as it is for a mariner to keep his vessel in a direct course without a rudder. Spiritual truths are not capable of an explanation based upon materiality or human opinions. Christian Science deals with the Scriptures from a spiritual basis and reveals God's means and methods of helping humanity as demonstrated by His Son, Christ Jesus, who declared, "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing." If this statement of the Nazarene is accepted as true, why does our critic make such ado about matter? Why should he feel disturbed because of what Christian Science teaches about the unreality of matter?

To declare for the reality and substantiality of matter is to oppose the teachings of our colleges and universities of to-day. Let us read what some of the world's eminent scholars and instructors have to say upon the subject of matter. Mr. Huxley says, "After all what do we know of this terrible matter except as the name of the unknown hypothetical cause of states of our consciousness." Such eminent natural scientists as Lord Kelvin and Sir William Crooks, according to newspaper reports, have concluded that atoms in their last analysis are forces, a conclusion which shows a tendency toward mental, rather than material causation. Grant Allen says, "The charges of materialism could only be brought against such a man by those abject materialists who have never had a glimpse of the profounder fact that the universe, as known to us, consists wholly of mind, and that matter is a doubtful and uncertain inference of the human intelligence." Professor Fiske expresses his opinion thus: "Apart from consciousness there are no such things as color, form, position, or hardness and there is no such thing as matter."

Christian Science does not teach that matter and material things do not exist as human phenomena, but it does demonstrate that the appearance to which the senses testify is not a creation of God, Spirit. However, this human sense or appearance of a natural universe and a matter man does not destroy the spiritual fact of existence, and Christian Science awakens mankind to understand and prove his divine sonship, existing in a spiritual universe governed and controlled by God, infinite Love. "Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. ... For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God."

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

It is just as impossible for our clerical critic to render...

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access