Editorial September 18, 1920 Issue

Credible Evidence

Gustavus S. Paine

The world at large demands not only well reasoned explanations of the Principle of Christian Science but authentic testimony as to the practical efficacy of this Principle. In other words, each one considering Christian Science in any way is entitled to understand its revelation of both cause and effect. That Principle is but a name for the true God, infinite Mind, needs to be clear to all. That practice is the necessary activity of the divine Mind, manifest as the whole living of the true man, it is equally important to prove. Principle and practice are interdependent. The tree must be known by its fruit. The actual relationship between genuine evidence and the Principle to which it testifies must be demonstrated. Mere human appearances alone are never reliable. The true phenomenon can always be shown to proceed from eternal Principle. Only as this is so is any evidence credible.

If a man five hundred years ago recovered from a disease after submitting to the ordinary medical treatment of the time, the mere fact of his recovery was not proof of the value of the medical method. Had the drug that was administered been really efficacious, it would still have the same therapeutic value. Any result that seems to come about through a fallacious means is but a temporary belief. As Mrs. Eddy says on page 155 of Science and Health, "When the sick recover by the use of drugs, it is the law of a general belief, culminating in individual faith, which heals; and according to this faith will the effect be." As the general belief changes, the seeming effect of various drugs or serums changes. That is why the discarded medicines and systems of treatment have been discarded. Their use rested entirely on a believed theory and not on Principle. "Even when you take away the individual confidence in the drug," Mrs. Eddy continues, "you have not yet divorced the drug from the general faith. The chemist, the botanist, the druggist, the doctor, and the nurse equip the medicine with their faith, and the beliefs which are in the majority rule. When the general belief endorses the inanimate drug as doing this or that, individual dissent or faith, unless it rests on Science, is but a belief held by a minority, and such a belief is governed by the majority." All such mere belief, no matter how general it may have ever seemed, must necessarily subside before the understanding and practice of absolute Principle.

The evidence of Christian Science is not just of evanescent results. The real result is always entirely coordinate with its divine cause. It can be thoroughly demonstrated that the veritable healing is the only logical result of infinite intelligence. Thus both the tree and its divine must be provably good, or there is no actual goodness. The student of Christian Science, as he goes forward, finds not only that he is healed but that he is comprehending more and more why healing is inevitable in the divine order. One turning to Christian Science must look conscientiously to Principle and its idea as the real cause and effect. The harmonious activity of divine intelligence is the true demonstration, and it is altogether spiritual and apart from any material sense of things. Before it, the very belief in materiality inevitably disappears.

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