Editorial March 31, 1945 Issue

Accidents, False Phenomena

Paul Stark Seeley

What we ordinarily think of as an accident is an unexpected occurrence resulting in injury to persons, or damage to things. Accidents are a clash of forces. A car which forces are moving in one direction collides with a car which forces are moving in another direction. Gravitation forces a plane, out of control, to fall against the resisting force of the earth. Physical bodies or things suffer from the colliding of these opposing forces. According to the evidence of physical sight and feeling, an accident is very real.

What then is the explanation of the single-sentence paragraph on page 424 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" where Mary Baker Eddy says, "Under divine Providence there can be no accidents, since there is no room for imperfection in perfection"? Here Mrs. Eddy does not say that accidents are not real to the material senses, but she states the scientific fact that accidents cannot occur "under divine Providence," in God's kingdom, because an accident is an imperfect effect, and there is no room for such an effect, or phenomenon, in the kingdom of Truth, where perfection is natural, perpetual, and universal.

If accidents never occur "under divine Providence," in the kingdom, or universe, of God, where do they occur? They occur in the temporary realm of erring mortal, material thought. All that seems to cause them, fear them, cognize, and experience them is what Christian Science calls mortal mind, the one basic error, or evil. This negative mind and the physical bodies and material mentalities which evidence it, together with the physical and materially mental forces by which it would control all material phenomena, are what make up an accident.

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