Editorial January 29, 1921 Issue

The Light of the World

Frederick Dixon

It seems to be beyond words difficult for the average human being to grasp the larger meaning of the simple words in daily use. So accustomed are people to the finite, often petty significance attached to these words, that the full intention is perpetually overlooked. The world, for instance, talks about Truth in a casual, indeterminate way. It has come, indeed, to reduce it almost to the limits of men's relative understanding of the facts of everyday existence. It has almost ceased to define it in terms of absolute metaphysics, and as a consequence, it is utterly confounded when it comes across the word in such a passage as that in the Fourth Gospel, "If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." However, as Mrs. Eddy points out, on page 570 of Science and Health, in writing of the woman clothed with the sun, the spiritual idea of Truth, "In this age the earth will help the woman; the spiritual idea will be understood."

The ways of God, Principle, are past understanding by the human mind. They can be grasped only through spiritual perception. So it comes about that the great gulf which the human intellect has fixed between natural science and the metaphysics of the schools is being bridged, with the result that the earth, material knowledge, is once more about to help the woman, the spiritual idea, or generic man, by proving the oneness of the relative truths of even human knowledge, when inspired by a desire for Truth, and so paving the way for the world's acceptance of that which Jesus the Christ preached, and which the writers of the New Testament have proclaimed as neiyvwoistovoeov, scientific knowledge of God, Truth. This, by way of example, although the world does not see it yet, is just what the discussion of the Einstein theory is doing. The contemptuous arguments of the natural scientists are being beaten about their ears by the clubs of pure mathematics, and already a clearer perception of what Truth really means is coming to mankind. "Throughout all generations both before and after the Christian era," Mrs. Eddy says, on page 333 of Science and Health, "the Christ, as the spiritual idea,—the reflection of God,—has come with some measure of power and grace to all prepared to receive Christ, Truth." The demonstration of Christian Science is thus forcing an open door, and men are beginning really to understand, after all these centuries, something of what the light of the world is,—the Christ, Truth, which is to free the world.

Now, herein is the open door, that, as Peter found in Jerusalem, and Paul and Silas in Philippi, bars do not require hands to remove them, nor bolts fingers to shoot them. Men are in prison to ideas, ideas thrust upon them by education, and objectified in matter, ideas purely supposititious inasmuch as they are nothing but counterfeits of some reality. The metaphysician of the schools has got as far as this, in recognizing that all that exists of matter is a subjective condition of the human mind, and now the natural scientist, resisting all the way, is being driven by Einstein to precisely the same conclusion. Presently he will say, as Agassiz has warned us, that he believed it all the time. But then will come the moment when it will be discovered that demonstrations of Truth cannot be made on a basis of the relative truths of human knowledge. It was there that Plato failed, it was there that Abelard was shipwrecked by his pride of intellect, and it was there Berkeley found his Philippi. It was there, on the other hand, that Aristotle discovered the excuse for his philosophy, that Anselm lost himself in materialism, and it was on that that Newton established his mechanical theory.

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