Article August 31, 1946 Issue

Pilate's Echoing Question

HORACE J. CARVER

The echo of Pilate's question, "What is truth?" resounds deep in the human heart, and will not be stilled until the answer is found in demonstration, which silences all question by positive proof. Even Pilate may have known that he was really asking: "What is the meaning of life? What is God?" He may have glimpsed the fact that he was voicing the universal cry for an understanding of reality, as human sense falters at its own dark frontier.

"Every individual character, like the individual John the Baptist, at some date must cry in the desert of earthly joy; and his voice be heard divinely and humanly. In the desolation of human understanding, divine Love hears and answers the human call for help; and the voice of Truth utters the divine verities of being which deliver mortals out of the depths of ignorance and vice" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 81). Thus Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, shows mankind where and how the answer may be found to this universal and imperative question.

Men's innate conviction that if the pure truth could but be found, the enigma of existence would be solved, implies an instinctive recognition that the ultimate truth is never afflictive, but beneficent, since God must be completely good and never divided against Himself or His creation. In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," and in her other prose works, Mrs. Eddy frequently uses the word "Truth" as a synonym for God.

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