Article August 25, 1928 Issue

Judging from a recent article in the above-named magazine,...

Miss Madge Bell, Committee on Publication for the North Island of New Zealand,—Auckland

New Zealand National Review

Judging from a recent article in the above-named magazine, we are led to conclude that Education, with or without the capital "E," is considered by some to be "no shield against credulity." It is therefore possible, and probable, that we need to revise our concept of what education is. "The entire purpose of true education," says Mrs. Eddy on page 252 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," "is to make one not only know the truth but live it," and such a process goes far beyond the mere book learning that often passes for education. It involves the training of the human mentality so that "I believe" is replaced by "I know," and demonstration of facts takes the place of theory or tradition. Credulity finds no abiding place in a truly educated mentality, for the tendency to believe on insufficient evidence must be eliminated by obedience to the injunction to "prove all things; hold fast that which is good." With various superstitions as its companions, credulity belongs to the half-educated and to the uneducated.

To accept without question the old traditional beliefs, religious or otherwise, savors more of credulity than does the giving up of them by people who have learned that these traditions have concealed rather than revealed the truth that lies behind them. Those people who have turned to Christian Science and discarded some of these old traditional beliefs, have done so because they have proved that it is, as the name indicates, the demonstrable truth about God and His universe, including man, which was taught by the words and works of Christ Jesus. To say that such teaching is neither Christian nor Science is to use a worn-out fallacy that is seldom voiced by any well-informed person in these days, when it must be recognized that any teaching based on divine Principle and dealing with exact knowledge is Science, and that the teaching which accords with the words and works of Christ Jesus is of necessity Christian. The rapid spread of Christian Science throughout the civilized world, and among all classes of people, is due not merely to the acceptance of assertions of its Founder, or to the credulity of its adherents, but to the fact that its students have proved it to be a revelation of that truth of which Christ Jesus said a knowledge would set us free, by destroying the "works of the devil"—sin, sorrow, want, woe, and even death.

Mary Baker Eddy, a gentle, deeply religious New England woman, made the discovery which she named "Christian Science," and defined as "the law of God, the law of good, interpreting and demonstrating the divine Principle and rule of universal harmony" (Rudimental Divine Science, p. 1), and it is in the knowledge and application of this law that Christian Scientists find the help they need in solving the problems of everyday experience. The "Bible" used by Christian Scientists is the ordinary Authorized, or King James Version of the Holy Scriptures, but the book incorrectly referred to as "Mrs. Eddy's Bible" is evidently the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. This book is used in conjunction with the Bible, as a commentary, but not in place of it. To anyone who reads it with thought biased by the old traditional beliefs, or in the light of mere sense-testimony, its statements may at times seem incoherent, but it is accepted by thousands of men and women who are truly well educated, as a book whose teaching is flawless in logic, as well as simple in practice. If the premise that God, who is infinitely good, is the only creator of the universe, and the fact that cause and effect, Mind and its expression, must be similar in character, are accepted, it is difficult to see how anyone can fail to recognize and admit the logic of Christian Science. It should, however, be clear that statements of absolute truth cannot be rightly judged in the light of mere human opinions; they need to be "spiritually discerned."

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