Article September 17, 1921 Issue

Return, O Israel

FANNIE BAKER BONNER

WHEN Mary Baker Eddy startled the world many years ago with her statement of the nothingness of matter, there were very few who were willing to accept her discovery, and when she further announced that what religious belief had called God is not a person but Principle governing the entire universe, many people objected. She argued that this Principle is Spirit, and that since the creation of Spirit must be spiritual, the real man must also be spiritual. The inference from this reasoning was plain, that Spirit was capable of doing all the creating, as a matter of fact always had been the only creator, and hence man in spite of all his assumptions was not and never can be the creator of a single thing that is real.

A few brave thinkers accepted her views, which to her were revelations, not views or beliefs, and as time went on and more thinkers read her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," the numbers grew, and much marvelous healing was done through the application of the understanding gained through the study of the book. It was recognized that the healing must follow as a proof of that understanding, and that the fundamental truth on which this healing is based is the unreality of all that is not the creation of God, Spirit.

As success took the place of the persecution of the earlier years, the cry arose that perhaps the early Christian Scientists had been too radical, perhaps they had antagonized mortal mind too much, because Mrs. Eddy says, "Emerge gently from matter into Spirit" (Science and Health, p. 485). It is all right to emerge gently, or Mrs. Eddy would have not written that sentence, but she surely did not mean that one should not keep on emerging, keep on progressing. She could not have meant that it is right to cease emerging altogether. These individuals who desired an easier way in Christian Science must have lost sight of the fact above stated, that all healing is founded on the fundamental truth that there is but one creator and one creation, and that placidly to justify the ordinary human methods of living on the basis of "Suffer it to be so now," is a letting down of the strict adherence to Principle which a real believer in Chris tian Science must always demand of self. By this it is not meant that there is any one living to-day who can safely declare he is living strictly in accordance with all that is acknowledged to be right and Christianly scientific. The letter of Christian Science is much more quickly and clearly grasped than the spirit; yet all that any one really has is what he has proved for himself through spiritual understanding of the truth.

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