Article March 14, 1936 Issue

Facing Facts

MAY LILIAN SPURWAY

The expression to "face facts" is one of many which take on a new meaning in the light of Christian Science. In common parlance, being obliged to face facts often connotes the giving up of hope, the admission that some evil or difficulty is insurmountable, as, for instance, to admit the possibility that some individual who is sick may not recover, or to admit that certain circumstances will probably involve one in poverty or danger.

How differently we learn to "face facts" in Christian Science! Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 471), "The facts of divine Science should be admitted,—although the evidence as to these facts is not supported by evil, by matter, or by material sense." What, then, are these "facts of divine Science" that we are to admit or face squarely? They are clearly set forth in Science and Health, and in our Leader's other writings. They involve the allness of God and His perfect creation, the allness of good and the nothingness of evil, the supremacy of Spirit, or Mind, and the nothingness of matter or material sense, the omnipotence of Love and the impotence of hate, the omnipresence of Life and health and the absence of disease and death. To face such facts as these is to stand on holy ground. To do this demands not mere human courage or fortitude, but a courage born of spiritual inspiration. Nothing less than this could have supported Mrs. Eddy in presenting these facts to an unbelieving world, thus startling humanity from its passive acceptance of a material concept of life and intelligence, and challenging it to awake to a new, spiritual basis from which to judge of cause and effect.

This same courage is greatly needed in the world today, and should characterize the lives of all Christian Scientists. On all sides there seem to be evidences of sickness, sin, and death, of poverty, hate, and fear—discord of every name and nature. Human means and methods of combating these difficulties seem more and more inadequate; and so the Christian Scientist realizes that his only remedy is to "face facts"—to turn away from the evidence of the senses which constitutes the so-called facts of mortal mind, and to hold bravely and persistently to the spiritual facts of being.

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