Article July 14, 1923 Issue

Professor Fiske, formerly a lecturer on philosophy in...

Harry L. Rhodes,

Great Bend Tribune

Professor Fiske, formerly a lecturer on philosophy in Harvard University, is authority for the following: "All the qualities of matter are what the mind makes them, and have no existence as such apart from the mind. ... Apart from consciousness there are no such things as color, form, position, or hardness, and there is no such things as matter." According to Webster, "The nature of matter is unknown, and the physicist can only describe certain of its properties and speculate on its structure." "Matter has no life," Mrs. Eddy tells us in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 584), "hence it has no real existence. Mind is immortal." Again she says on page 425 of the same book, "Mortal man will be less mortal, when he learns that matter never sustained existence and can never destroy God, who is man's Life;" adding farther on, "Consciousness constructs a better body when faith in matter has been conquered." Mrs. Eddy discovered that matter is but a human concept, and not a creation of God. God's creation consists of spiritual ideas, which are forever reflected. Matter is only an expression of mortal thought.

"As the words person and personal are commonly and ignorantly employed," writes Mrs. Eddy, "they often lead, when applied to Deity, to confused and erroneous conceptions of divinity and its distinction from humanity. If the term personality, as applied to God, means infinite personality, then God is infinite Person,—in the sense of infinite personality, but not in the lower sense. An infinite Mind in a finite form is an absolute impossibility" (Science and Health, p. 116). God is not a physical personality, and we cannot think rightly of God if we conclude that He is less than infinite. The human personality is finite and is not the likeness of God, who is infinite Spirit. The Bible declares that "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." It is idolatry to believe that God is like a human person; and in proportion as our ideas of God become more spiritual, we shall learn to understand the absolute truth of the infinitude of God and His unchangeableness, and the unreality of all that God did not create.

Prayer is the greatest means for help known to men; and the Christian Scientist has learned to surrender his personal wishes, knowing that God gives all things to those who love Him, realizing that all real desires are God-given; for "your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him." The Christian Scientist's prayer is more a prayer of affirmation than of supplication. The latter form of prayer asks, pleads, begs God to do good. The prayer of affirmation is a prayer of faith and understanding. It declares that God is good, and thereby reflects God's ever present and omnipotent power. Prayer is not made for the purpose of being heard of men. Our Master said, "When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and they Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." The purpose of prayer, as the Christian Scientist understands it, is to bring thought into accord with the spirit of Truth and Love, which heals the sick and the sinner. Christian Scientists affirm actual present truths, and do not merely hope they are true, or that they will, perhaps, bring good to them. They do not hope that God will be good, but they assert that He is good as an ever present fact; that God is All-in-all, and that there is none beside Him; and that there is no power opposed to Him with a shred of authority. Instead of praying the sun to shine on us, all we need to do is to put ourselves into its light as it is radiated through space.