Article May 30, 1953 Issue

THE LANGUAGE OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

ROBERT A. CURRY

A Noted French chemist of the latter half of the eighteenth century, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, carried his experiments in his field so far beyond those of anyone before him that he literally ran out of words and expressions to describe his findings. Hence he was forced to create symbols for his discoveries in chemistry, and from these facts he has been called the "father of modern chemistry."

Scarcely a century later Mary Baker Eddy found herself in a somewhat similar position with regard to her explorations in the Science of Mind. Of this she has said in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (pp. 317, 318): "My diction, as used in explaining Christian Science, has been called original. The liberty that I have taken with capitalization, in order to express the 'new tongue,' has well-nigh constituted a new style of language." Mrs. Eddy went further than anyone before her, except Christ Jesus, in fathoming the mystery of the kingdom of God and in explaining the insubstantiality of matter. So deep was this subject, and so fraught with unending spiritual potentiality, that it is significant that Christian Science was revealed through the medium of the English language.

No one recognized more thoroughly than Mrs. Eddy the inadequacy of even the English language as a temporal and temporary mold for the unconfined "new tongue" of Spirit. Nevertheless, it is a fact that this language offers the writer at the present time more than six hundred thousand words. It is also true that the languages of this earth which, next to English, have the most words cannot compare with the richness of the English language. Hence, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science had a greater choice than she would have had in any other tongue.

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