Editorial September 25, 1943 Issue

Icebergs and Jellyfish

John Randall Dunn

The human mind is given to surprises. Being governed largely by emotional, material impulses, again and again it voices surprising thoughts and notions. Palpably these proceed not from deep, seasoned thinking. Even Christ Jesus on occasion was forced to rebuke unwise utterances of some of his overzealous disciples. Today we sometimes hear from the lips of a man or woman studying Christian Science surprising statements. Here is such a one: A person calling himself a Christian Scientist was heard to remark that far too much attention was being given to the moral aspects of our religion; that mankind must awaken to the fact that we are students of a Science, demonstrable, exact, and that one's scientific sense therefore should not be cluttered up with religious emotions and concerned too deeply with Christian sentiment. In like vein he might continue, Do the morals of the student of mathematics enter into the question of his use of the multiplication table? Does the mathematician concern himself with anything but the contemplation of fixed and undeviating rules, and the application thereof to a given problem? A subtle and specious argument, this. Be alert, O metaphysical mariner, and change your course. Rocks ahead, fog and icebergs ahead!

Early in her great chapter, "Recapitulation," in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," our God-directed Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, makes a statement of tremendous significance to the student of Christian Science. It will be recalled that the chapter in question is the one from which all classes in Christian Science are taught; and in the fourth question and answer the student hears expounded this great, basic truth (p. 466): "Science will declare God aright, and Christianity will demonstrate this declaration and its divine Principle, making mankind better physically, morally, and spiritually." Here indeed is "the marriage of the Lamb" poetically visualized in St. John's Revelation—the union of Science and Christianity, the law and the gospel; and, writes the apostle, "Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb." Fortunate, happy, blessed indeed is the student of Christian Science who grasps the transcendent fact of the unity of Science and Christianity, and with this clear chart before him proceeds to steer his craft safely through the dangerous shoals and hidden reefs of erroneous human conceptions.

"Science will declare God aright" —there is the starting point, the first tenet to be grasped by the would-be scientific seaman. Science, says Webster, is "knowledge clarified and made available in work, life, or the search for truth." Our great Leader, without doubt endowed with a wisdom not of this world, has scientifically defined God as the all-knowing Mind, infinitely good and harmonious; as law-embracing Principle, as changeless Love. Now there is no such thing in the universe as a cause without an effect; as a sun, for instance, without any rays, as a mind without thoughts or ideas. Therefore, infinite, causative Mind must have an expression, the creator must have a creation. What is termed man and the universe is, therefore, the outcome, the manifestation, of this great First Cause. Says a familiar hymn:

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