Article October 7, 1922 Issue

The sum of a critic's letter, in a recent issue of your...

Cyril R. Hewson, Committee on Publication for Derbyshire, England,

Derby Daily Telegraph

The sum of a critic's letter, in a recent issue of your paper, seems to be that what the material senses are cognizant of must be real, and that to deny its reality must be absurd. Has it never occurred to her that education continually reverses the evidence of these senses; and that when it was discovered, for instance, that the earth was round, no amount of argument from the standpoint of these senses could ever make it otherwise? In the same way, to stamp upon the ground, as Doctor Johnson did, to emphasize the reality of matter is no proof of its reality. Matter is a mental concept, the phenomena of material thought, and seems real or unreal in proportion to one's belief or disbelief in it. To the materialist matter seems to be real enough, and nothing will convince him of its unreality. Christian Science, however, accepting the Scriptural statement of the allness of God, Spirit, insists that matter's seeming reality must sooner or later give place to the recognition and demonstration of the supremacy of Spirit. Surely Paul bears this out when he says: "Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. ... For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality." The whole life of Jesus was a proof of the power of Spirit to overrule the so-called laws of matter. He healed the sick and raised the dead in spite of the evidence of the material senses of the reality of disease and death. He fed five thousand people in spite of the fact that only five loaves and two fishes were apparently available; and he walked on the water, and carried the boat across the lake in a moment, in spite of the law of gravitation. The woman who came to him with an issue of blood, it is stated, "had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any."

The critic speaks of people rejecting medical aid, instead of doing their best to make a good recovery; but it happens that most of the people who come to Christian Science for healing are like the woman just referred to, for they come to it usually as a last resort, and because they have failed to find healing by medical means. It is not for want of trying medical means that people seek healing in Christian Science, but because they have exhausted all these means and have failed to find healing; and then they learn that God heals by spiritual and not by material means. In order to convey a correct impression of what is really meant in Christian Science by the unreality of matter, allow me to quote from Mrs. Eddy's book "Unity of Good." On page 8 of this book in answer to the question, "Is anything real of which the physical senses are cognizant?" she writes: "Everything is as real as you make it, and no more so. What you see, hear, feel, is a mode of consciousness, and can have no other reality than the sense you entertain of it." Again, on the following page she writes: "What is the cardinal point of the difference in my metaphysical system? This: that by knowing the unreality of disease, sin, and death, you demonstrate the allness of God." Farther on (p. 10) she says, "The reality of these so-called existences I deny, because they are not to be found in God, and this system is built on Him as the sole cause."

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