Editorial June 12, 1920 ISSUE

Law and Its Counterfeit

Frederick Dixon

Law, scientifically understood, is that in which no variation is possible. The moment any variation is perceived, that which has hitherto been regarded as law passes into the limbo of supposititious law and ceases to be of interest in Science, except as some stage in an experimental investigation. It was by a neglect of so simple a definition as this that Hume laid himself open to being unhorsed by the lance of Huxley. Hume had defined the miracle as a violation of a law of nature,—a thing impossible, as Huxley was prompt to point out. A violated law, ipso facto, never was a law at all. Thus, as Huxley showed, either the miracles were the proof of unsuspected law, or else the Maker of the universe was involved in the impossible, that is to say, in the violation of His own law. This, surely, is why Mrs. Eddy writes, on page 134 of Science and Health, "The true Logos is demonstrably Christian Science, the natural law of harmony which overcomes discord,—not because this Science is supernatural or preternatural, nor because it is an infraction of divine law, but because it is the immutable law of God, good."

The operation, then, of law is perceptible throughout even the material creation. If it were not for the existence of absolute spiritual law, the counterfeit of law in physical nature could not have been conceived. Consequently, as the so-called physical law can be and is perpetually being proved to be lawless, it is obvious that it is the existence of true law which alone protects the physical counterfeit from immediate destruction. In other words, it is only the fact that physical law counterfeits the spiritual that made it possible for the writer of Job to demand, "Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?" The human mind, in other words, intensely lawless in itself, finds it necessary to counterfeit true law sufficiently closely to prevent the immediate destruction of its own counterfeit.

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