Article July 29, 1939 Issue

From Letters, Substantially as Published

In a recent issue of your publication a correspondent,...

The Hon. C. Augustus Norwood, Committee on Publication for The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, Massachusetts,—Boston

Zion's Herald

In a recent issue of your publication a correspondent, after stating that he is in agreement at many points with what he refers to as the "spiritual theology" of Christian Science, contends that he "can win the virtues of spirituality, perform the integrities of morality, incarnate the ideals of ethics, and manifest the attitudes of sociology, and still feel convinced of the reality of materiality."

Relatively speaking, this contention may be sound. One can express to a degree in his daily living virtues and ideals of spirituality without denying the reality of matter. One can to a degree appreciate, to quote again from your inquirer, "goats' milk, a trolley car, a ship's anchor, or the beautiful plumage of the tropical birds ... without postulating the nonexistence of the world of realims [matter]." One can undoubtedly find many beauties to enjoy and many opportunities to be of service to mankind without questionign the reality of matter. However, one can never rise above a human, temporal sense of existence, with all its problems and limitations, so long as he feels that his true life is circumscribed by matter and a material sense of existence.

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discovere and Founder of Christian Science, says (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 87): "To take all all earth's beauty into one gulp of vacuity and label beauty nothing, is ignorantly to caricature God's creation, which is unjust to human sense and to the divine realism. In our immature sense of spiritual things, let us say of the beauties of the sensuous universe: I love your promise; and shall know, some time, the spiritual reality and substance of form, light, and color, of what I now through you discern dimly; and knowing this, I shall be satisfied.'"

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