The faculty of reason is one which we can all exercise. In fact, we cannot get very far without it. It is important to reason rightly, for only through right reasoning can correct conclusions be arrived at. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 492) Mary Baker Eddy writes: "For right reasoning there should be but one fact before the thought, namely, spiritual existence. In reality there is no other existence, since Life cannot be united to its unlikeness, mortality."

This important pronouncement by the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science strikes a note unfamiliar to the one accustomed to reason from a material standpoint. If matter were causative, then the accepted premise would be that all is matter, and conclusions drawn from this premise would keep in the direct line of matter without taking cognizance of spiritual causation. This is the standpoint of dialectic materialism, a doctrine today trailing its dragon tail across the path towards heaven, claiming to becloud the light of Truth and to draw to earth many of the spiritual luminaries of heaven.

It is sad to think how many noble thinkers have been dragged down by this fable of materialism. Christian Science shows the doctrine of dialectic materialism, which assumes basic and expanding proportions, to be a negation. This doctrine is seen to have neither true basis nor real proportions, but to fall headlong to its own self-destruction.

It required a devout and spiritually-minded woman to stand up against the torrents of materialism. Mrs. Eddy alone was found worthy and able to do so. She moved in a diametrically opposite direction to the commonly accepted materialistic reasoning of mankind. She rejected the traditional and material theory of God, man, and the universe, and accepted through revelation its opposite, the spiritual idea which is the the revealed in the Scriptures. She adhered consistently to a priori reasoning, which starts with perfect God and perfect man, perfect cause and perfect effect. She refused to be drawn away from her spiritual quest for God by the pains or pleasures of matter. She loved God, found God, and walked with God, and thus through reason and revelation she became the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science.

Her discovery is one which is revolutionizing human thought by turning mankind from the false premise of life, substance, and intelligence in matter to the original and correct premise of God, Spirit, as All-in-all and of man as made in God's likeness. It needed faith, courage, and self-abnegation of the highest order to present this new viewpoint to mankind. In "Miscellaneous Writings" she says (p. 234), "That one should have ventured on such unfamiliar ground, and, self-forgetful, should have gone on to establish this mighty system of metaphysical healing, called Christian Science, against such odds,—even the entire current of mortality,—is matter of grave wonderment to profound thinkers."

Many today are following in Mrs. Eddy's footsteps. They are beginning to reason not from a material, but from a spiritual standpoint. Thus they have commenced to turn the wheels of reason in the right direction. To begin with God is to begin correctly. The opening words of the book of Genesis, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," have a profound and positive significance.

Consider the chain of reasoning employed by the average mortal with regard to a sick person. He begins from the premise of matter and accepts the evidence of a material person inhabiting a sick body. His next conclusion is that something must have produced the sickness, and this something he names material law. Following his fallacious arguments further, he reasons that material laws may be destructive and that sooner or later, through the operation of laws such as those of decay and disease, this mortal will die. Here let it be observed that God, the great creator of the universe, is left entirely out of his reasoning.

A Christian Scientist reasons from a diametrically opposite standpoint. He accepts the spiritual premise of Christ Jesus, namely, perfect God and perfect man, given by the Master in that strong and precise statement (Matt. 5:48), "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." The Christian Scientist does not accept as true the evidence of a material person inhabiting a sick body. He turns from sense to Soul; and there, safe in the Science of divine Life, he finds man as Mind's reflection. He recognizes that man has spiritual faculties and expresses the wisdom, intelligence, comprehension, and apprehension of divine Mind. He looks for man in the safety of divine Love, where no frailty or failure exists or has ever existed. The laws governing the ideal man are not material but spiritual. They do not operate in contrary directions, but are always beneficent. Spiritual discernment reveals the man of God's creating, and since as our Leader says, "The spiritual dominates the temporal" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 193), the person or patient presents a normal and healthful appearance. This natural premise of perfect God and perfect man is the one from which a Christian Scientist reasons.

The prophet Isaiah wrote (Isa. 1:18), "Come now, and let us reason together." When the Christian Science practitioner and his patient reason from the spiritual standpoint, it is not long before revelation appears and confirms whatever right reasoning has admitted. Thus the status of man as a child of God is brought to light, and a healing in Christian Science inevitably follows.

Robert Ellis Key