Editorial September 21, 1974 Issue

The Only Basis of Demonstration

Geoffrey J. Barratt

Given some understanding of Christian Science, it's natural to wish to prove it decisively. To prove Christian Science at all, there is one essential element that must underlie the demonstration. This necessity is simple in statement, though it may seem more difficult in application. Yet the demonstration of Science is easier the more we put our understanding on a correct foundation. Mary Baker Eddy tells us, "Spirit is infinite; therefore Spirit is all. 'There is no matter' is not only the axiom of true Christian Science, but it is the only basis upon which this Science can be demonstrated."^{ The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 357;}

The belief that Spirit is not all, that there is some place within Spirit where matter exists, or that Spirit exists outside of matter is not the basis from which we can demonstrate Christian Science and repeat today, in some measure, the works of Christ Jesus. Regardless of the problem facing us, belief in matter is inevitably an aspect of it. To have even a momentary conviction of the entireness of Spirit, accompanied by the concomitant certainty that matter is nothing and nowhere, is to be oblivious to matter and to problems, and this has a corrective effect.

We can't very well get rid of troubles while hanging on to the belief that is at the heart of trouble—that is, the belief that matter is actual. A derivative belief is that man is material. When we are sure that matter does not exist, this conviction is supported by the sureness that material man has no reality. Isaiah advises, "Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils."^{ Isa. 2:22;} Sickness is inseparably linked with the arguments of mortal mind that matter is true, that man is material and innately sinful, and that matter is malfunctioning or—in the form of viruses, perhaps—harming a supposedly physical body.