Article April 24, 1948 Issue

THE ALLNESS OF TRUTH

[Of Special Interest to Young People]

ARTHUR W. SWAN

A Group of young people engrossed in wholesome mental gymnastics were given the following sequence of words to punctuate so that they would make sense: That that is is that that is not is not is not that true it is. They were told, incidentally, that the solution of this puzzle would reveal a simple but profound truth.

One of the group who worked out the correct answer in the allotted time was a young Christian Scientist. When confronted with this apparently meaningless jumble of words, John quickly saw that the first four could be punctuated as follows: "That that is, is." The result—a simple affirmation. But John understood something of the deep significance of these words because his experience as a pupil in a Christian Science Sunday School had blessed him with an abiding conviction of the changeless nature of God, or Truth, who is "the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever" (Hebr. 13:8). Therefore he knew that the statement, "That that is, is," proclaimed a primary and eternal fact of being—the allness and "isness" of Truth.

The next six words, John saw to be a declaration of the irreversibility of this primary and eternal fact: "That that is not, is not." The allness of spiritual reality and the nothingness or unreal nature of material sense testimony are lucidly pointed out by Mary Baker Eddy, the divinely inspired author of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." On pages 207 and 208 of this book she states: "The spiritual reality is the scientific fact in all things. The spiritual fact, repeated in the action of man and the whole universe, is harmonious and is the ideal of Truth. Spiritual facts are not inverted; the opposite discord, which bears no resemblance to spirituality, is not real. The only evidence of this inversion is obtained from suppositional error, which affords no proof of God, Spirit, or of the spiritual creation. Material sense defines all things materially, and has a finite sense of the infinite."

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