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."

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