Article May 29, 1920 Issue

There is no particular need of urging mankind to seek...

The Christian Science Monitor

There is no particular need of urging mankind to seek after knowledge, as that has been the chief occupation of humanity since the beginning of time; but because it has mistaken material knowledge for true enlightenment, its search, in proportion to its success, has been very logically rewarded with the cumulated evil effects of materialistic knowledge. The knowing of evil is a travesty of knowledge, proved to be so in the first human taste of materiality. Furthermore, it is only a material so-called mind that can know evil and explore its ramifications. Material knowledge is based upon the evidence of the corporeal senses, and the farther material knowledge is extended, the nearer, necessarily, it comes to the essence of materiality, the carnal mind itself,—which is, as Paul declared, enmity against God,—and its product, material-mindedness, death. The search for merely material knowledge is something worse, then, than time wasted; it becomes a positive evil in that, instead of truly liberating thought, it more hopelessly confines it within the illusions and limitations of materiality.

It is necessary, of course, for the human being to seek knowledge; for progress is a law of being, and progress is possible only through the unfoldment of thought, the instrument of knowledge. A simple test may be applied to knowledge through which a man may determine whether what he is learning is a true development or whether it is leading him farther from the liberation that should follow enlightenment. The writer of Proverbs understood this test and knew that true knowledge leads a man nearer to God and that this is the end of wisdom. "If thou criest after knowledge," he said, "and liftest up thy voice for understanding; ... then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God."

If it be conceded that God is omniscient, that is, all-knowing, it is clear that in Him, as Paul declared, "are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge;" and that spiritual man, in the likeness of God, must derive all that he knows or can know from divine Principle, the fountain of knowledge. Humanity's need, then, is to determine whether in all the knowledge that it seeks it finds God nearer and knows Him better. A man must know that Truth is divine Principle, if he is to have any way of ascertaining that what he knows is true. When he knows this he can no longer reasonably seek after false knowledge based upon the material senses. He recognizes it for what it is, ephemeral, limiting, an unreality which he must eventually discard. He labors, instead, for that spiritually scientific knowledge of God, or Principle, which includes all true knowledge, and which is indicated by Mrs. Eddy, when she writes on page 127 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," "If God, the All-in-all, be the creator of the spiritual universe, including man, then everything entitled to a classification as truth, or Science, must be comprised in a knowledge or understanding of God, for there can be nothing beyond illimitable divinity."

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