The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-10-14
NEW HAVEN MORNING JOURNAL AND COURIER MONDAY OCTOBER M

the slightest degree the cogency of the evenings argument. However, as this charge is one of the parrot-like "re- plies" which Mrs. Eddy's publication committees" are constantly using, let us glance for moment at specimen of fundamental irrationality in"Science and Health" to which the question of context is, in the nature of the case, irrelevant. Mrs. Eddy declares: ''The fundamental propositions of Christian Science are summarized in the four following, to me, self-evident proposi- tions. Even if read backward, these propositions will be found to agree in statement and proof: We are now to. be introduced, mark, to "self-evident propositions the italics are Mrs. Ed dy's own. Now of course a self-evident proposition owes nothing to it's context; 1t may be legitlmately considered on it's own merits-judged by its face value. Before reading to you these four ax- ioms, as they seem to Mrs. Eddy to be, may l take the liberty of quoting a piece of her fine writing" found in her exegesis of Genesis 1: 26. She is not thinking of her "Ontology" for the moment, but is apparently absorbed in her rhetoric; she writes:
 "The sunlight gllnts from the church. dome, glances into the prison-cell, glides into the sick-chamber gilds the hospital cot, brightens the flower, beau- tifies the landscape, blesses the earth. Man, made in His likeness, possesses and reflects Gods dominion over all the earth" Now we are ready for the self-evident propositions, either for ward CT backward"
 T. God is all in all 2 God is good Good is mind. 3. God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter 4. Life God, omnip- otent good, deny death, evil, sin, dis ease. Disease. sin, evil. death, deny Good, omnipotent God, Life" Look for moment at No 8 as a self-evident proposition. Mrs. Eddy thinks that God is "all,' in a sense, to exclude all other existence that the Infinite One denies the finite many It Is true that God can be the only self-exlstent being, but it does not follow from this that there, can be no other beings momentarlly de- pendent upon Him. God is not identi- cal with all things; In Him all things consist, but no quantitatlve total of l created things can exhaust or express His transcendent life. How the Infinite One could create the finite many Is for human thought an insoluble mystery, but the mystery of that divine picture language which we call the physical universe is not so great as is the mys- tery of finite personalities with powers of choice, in world upheld by one sov- eign Will. If God being all means. as Mrs Eddy intends in her third fax om,' that God is the solitary reality of ex- | istence, then this "axiom" would log ically read, "God, Spirit, being all, nothing is the created universe" and for the fourth proposition we might logically substitute the following as equally "self-evident," life. Cod, omnlpotent Good, deny sun-hght, church-dome, prison-cell, sick-chamber, hospital cot, flower, landscape, earth, man-man, earth, landscape, flower, hospital cot, sick-chamber, prison n-cell, church-dome, sunlight, deny Good, om.
 nipotent God, life" Even if read back ward our substitute proposition agrees
 In statement and proof. Of course Mrs
 Eddy is trying to get rid of evil, but
 the problem with which the greatest
 minds have wrestled from the poet of
 ''Job" to the poet of Tn Memoriam
 Is not to be solved by irrationally de-
 nying the existence of a created uni
 verse. If there were time we should find an analysis Of fathe next fundamental
 paragraph In Mrs Eddys book to dls-
 close, if possible, even greater puerili-
 ties of thought. what can be said of a
 mind capable of the following? "The metaphysics of Christian Science. like
 the rules of mathematics, prove the rule by inversion. For example. There
 iss no pain In truth, and no truth in pain; no matter in Good, and
 no good in matter" And this Is what
 satisfies Mrs. Eddy and her followers
 as proof" Is not some truth un-
 speakably painful? And as for "inyer-
 sion" are the following proofs" con.
 vincing2 There Is no electricity ir
 Truth and no truth in electricity; nc
 pure air in Good and no good in pure air-or, to drop abstructions-no milk ir
 water and no water in milk; no India
 in serpents and no serpents in India
 How much importance can rational
 minds attach to Mrs Eddy's tall
 about proof" and demonstration" af
 ter such self-revelatlon of logical in.
 competency? And this is the very bas
 is of the textbook which the "Chris.
 tian Scientist" places beside her Bible
 and enthrones over her mental life. N
 Christian should become a member O
 Mrs. Eddy's cult because to do so Is tt Ipart company with the world of ra. tional thought.
 Our second answer to the question O
 our evenings topic is; Because Mrs Eddy's exposition of the Bible is large
 ly illegitimate and untrue. She make! , the stupendous claim of supplying af ter nineteen centuries, the only trut "Key to the Scriptures" but she is nt , more competent for the great task O 1 Scrlptural eXegesis than for any othe ) critical and scholarly work A woman so inaccurate as to quote Browning , phrase from "A Death in the Desert"- ''the prize of learning love"--as "tht price of learning love" (evidently { mistake of the ear), so ignorant as t, 2 derive the word polish" from polls,
 the Greek word for city with which, a l Prof Dixon saUs 'Gt has m mora ti : do than with a policemans boots," s, lacking in literary sense as to hay perpetrated the following:
 , t Tt Is the strait and narrow way
 That leads to that eternal day,
 That turns my darkness into light,