Article February 5, 1966 Issue

The Importance of Scholarship

RUSSELL D. ROBINSON

"Academics of the right sort are requisite," Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes on page 195 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." She adds, "Observation, invention, study, and original thought are expansive and should promote the growth of mortal mind out of itself, out of all that is mortal." Earlier on the same page she writes: "Whatever furnishes the semblance of an idea governed by its Principle, furnishes food for thought. Through astronomy, natural history, chemistry, music, mathematics, thought passes naturally from effect back to cause." What a challenge to the Christian Scientist at a college or university! Whatever his field of interest, its study can provide opportunity for the expansion of thought that "should promote the growth of mortal mind out of itself, out of all that is mortal."

Sometimes in misreading Mrs. Eddy's works one might conclude that she opposed various academic disciplines. Closer and more careful reading reveals that she opposed, not the disciplines, but the false assumptions and false conclusions based on matter and material sense testimony.

She writes plainly on the page mentioned above, "It is the tangled barbarisms of learning which we deplore,—the mere dogma, the speculative theory, the nauseous fiction." Each field of study has its share of tangled barbarisms, mere dogma, and speculative theory, and literature studies have their share of nauseous fiction. But while deploring these, no Christian Scientist should lose sight of the opportunity academic study affords for thought to pass "naturally from effect back to cause."

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