Permit me to explain that Mary Baker Eddy in the...

Willard J. Welch, Committee on Publication for the State of Iowa,—Des Moines

Permit me to explain that Mary Baker Eddy in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," and in all her other writings, teaches the exact opposite of pantheism. So important did she consider right teaching on this subject, that in June, 1898, her Message to The Mother Church was a sermon entitled "Christian Science versus Pantheism." This message, which occupies fifteen pages of her book, "Christian Healing and Other Writings," goes into a detailed examination and repudiation of pantheism and other non-Christian philosophies. To sustain our point we need only offer the following quotations from page 8 of this message: "Christianity, as taught and demonstrated in the first century by our great Master, virtually annulled the so-called laws of matter, idolatry, pantheism, and polytheism. Christianity then had one God and one law, namely, divine Science." Farther on she says: "Christianity, as he taught and demonstrated it, must ever rest on the basis of the First Commandment and love for man. The doctrines that embrace pantheism, polytheism, and paganism are admixtures of matter and Spirit, truth and error, sickness and sin, life and death. They make man the servant of matter, living by reason of it, suffering because of it, and dying in consequence of it."

The correct form of the quotation from page 113 of the Christian Science textbook is as follows:—

"1. God is All-in-all.
"2. God is good. Good is Mind.
"3. God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter.
"4. Life, God, omnipotent good, deny death, evil, sin, disease. — Disease, sin, evil, death, deny good, omnipotent God, Life."

These spiritual facts are directly deduced from, and supported by, Bible truths, and are capable of proof to the degree that they are consistently applied to human need, after the manner taught and practiced by Christ Jesus. To the scientific Christian, these words are a majestically beautiful statement, recognizing the infinite God, who by John is named Love. All admit God to be omnipresent, and to be supreme intelligence. This supreme intelligence is Mind, the word being capitalized to differentiate it from the so-called human, or, as Paul calls it, carnal mind.

It is evident that if God, Mind, Spirit, fills all space, matter is nothing. This does not mean that matter does not seem real to the deceiving mortal senses, just as the wisdom of God is always foolishness to the unillumined thought. This is why we all need to "be born again" — to enter into the realm of Spirit through true thinking. Paul says, "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind;" and again, "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." Christian Science does teach the allness — that is, the infinitude — of God, Spirit, and the nothingness of materiality, which may seem so real, but which must dissolve finally under the blaze of Truth. Even natural scientists now "explain matter by explaining it away."

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