Article September 27, 1919 Issue

The careful reader of "Science and Health with Key to...

The Christian Science Monitor

The careful reader of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," the textbook of Christian Science, can hardly fail to notice the frequency with which Mrs. Eddy uses the phrase, "the supremacy of Spirit." Ten times in the textbook she repeats, as the Concordance shows, that identical phrase, to say nothing of the changes by the substitution of the words Mind, Truth, good, and other variations which in their final analysis amount to the same statement. In her "Miscellaneous Writings' the same phrase occurs no less than five times more. Discounting the criticism of those who have failed utterly to approach Mrs. Eddy's metaphysical standpoint, it may safely be said that she always said exactly what she meant in the best words it was possible to select to express that meaning. When, therefore, we find her using continually the statement of the supremacy of Spirit, we may be very sure that she not only meant what the words imply, but also that the thought therein expressed came from her innermost heart. If this were not so she would hardly have used them so often.

Before the discovery of Christian Science we might have heard the words, supremacy of Spirit, from the pulpit or platform, but they did not carry the living vigor that they do in the light of the Christian Science textbook. Why? one may reasonably ask. Do not the same words always mean the same thing? In this instance the vitality of the expression had been sapped by centuries of "vain repetition" which lacked the demonstration necessary to a living faith. To go on for a lifetime repeating the words "supremacy of Spirit" while nine tenths of that lifetime was given up to proving the exact opposite, namely the supremacy of matter in our lives, was a poor way to embody living force and practical faith in the words we professed to believe.

Here, then, was the situation described in the Scriptures: "Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief." And Jesus did help his unbelief, by casting out the "dumb and deaf spirit," and healing the child of the man who had uttered that despairing cry; despairing especially, perhaps, because the disciples of Jesus had failed to make this demonstration of healing. It is to be noted that Jesus did not tell the father of the child that he must believe without receiving; that it was his Father's will that the child should remain afflicted; that such visitations were the evidences of the inscrutable wisdom of God, whose ways man knoweth not, or any other like sophistries into which his later professed followers were misled. His answer was the healing of the child, and he did not wholly excuse the disciples for their failure in this case. Greater humility, more absolute dependence upon the supremacy of Spirit, was what he implied was necessary, in the words, "This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting."

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