Los Angeles herald., 1909-01-24
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
KNOWS BUT SPIRIT
REALISM OF MATTER DISPUT-
ED BY RESULTS
Doctrine of Mrs. Eddy Teaches the
Consciousness of UnreaIity of
Sin, Disease and
Death

m HERE is nothing in this world for
which mankind has a greater re-
= spect than matter, as matter is
commonly conceived, and there is GER
tainly nothing which less deserves it's
respect. The cardinal difference be-
tween Christian Science and every 9TH
er philosophical system lies in this, or.
as Mrs. Eddyeputs it, that by knowing
the unIeality of disease, sin and DEATH
you demonstrate the allneSs of God"
No other thinker since the day of Jesus
and his disciples has ever got anywhere
near this; and if one had he would
have met with the same opposition as
Christian Science. The ancientS, it is
true, represented matter as a privation,
but that is quite another thing, and
leaves everybody as comfortably ma
terial as they were before. Again the
scientific idealists, from the time Of
Berkeley down at any rate, proclaimed
the unreality of matter, but that did
not prevent them from acting precisely
as if 1t was real, so that there was a
genuine excuse for Lord Byron's fam
Gus epigram:
When Bishop Berkeley said there no
matter,
And proved it-'twas no matter what he
said
People frequently refer to the denial
tions of philosophic idealism, as if it
bore some relationship to the denial Of
the reality Of matter in Christian Sci
ence. AS a matter of fact, the gulf be-
tween the two theories is as wide as
that which separated Dives from Laz-
aruS.
Brain Contained in Mind
TO Berkeley physical phenomena were
simply a subjective state Of mind. That
is to say, instead of the human mind
being contained in the brain, the brain
itself was contained in mind. This. OF
course, ultimately reduced matter to
manifestation of God, and so the ideal
ism of Berkeley, as Huxley pointed out.
vanished into undiluted pantheism.
Now if you will substitute energy for
God, you will have the point of view Of
the philosophic idealism OF today. Mat
ter, writes Professor Ostwald, is some
thing we have constructed for our
selves, but he goes on to prove that the
only reality is energy.
Now all this amounts to in the end is
the proverbial fight about the ass
shadow, and that was just what made
Huxley say that eventually there was
nothing to choose between materialiSm
and idealism, and that one was as pure
a piece of speculation as the other. If
energy is real, and matter is result of
its vibrations, matter to all practical
intents is itself real. The causes of life
are inherent in a force which at any
rate permits local inharmony, and sin,
disease and death are as uncomfortable
as in the materialistic theory that moth
ing exists but "the forces inherent in
matter"
BerkeIeian Theory Differs
The Berkeleian theory differs from
this mainly in so far as it substitutes
God for energy. 1t makes God as abso-
lutely responsible for matter as the
ordinary theological teaching, though
inasmuch as it represents matter as a
mental phenomenon, it implies that all
the sin, disease and death in the world
is a part of the divine consciousness
rather than a result of it. 1t is not
much to be wondered, therefore, that
Mrs. Eddy insists that the cardinal diff
ference between Christian Science
idealism and the teaching of natural
science is the consciousness Of the un-
reality Of sin, disease and death, and
declares that "the Apostle Paul ex-
plains this warfare between the idea Of
divine power which Jesus presented,
and NEUROLOGICAL material intelligence
called energy and opposed to Spirit"
The fact is that every form of teach
ing other than Christian Science ulti-
inately results in making God respon-
sible for evil, simply because those who
accept it will not agree to the logical
deduction that the admission of the
infinity of God leaves no room for evil,
and will insist on attempting to account
for the evidence of their own senses as
part of the divine creation.
Universe Is Spiritual
Seated on the parapet of Jacobs well,
Christ Jesus told the woman of Sa-
maria, "God is spirit; and they that
worship him must worship him in spirit
and in truth" The universe, therefore,
and man made in His image and like
ness must be spiritual and not mate
rial, unless it is possible to gather
grapes of thorns. The material uni
verse, as man sees it, cannot be any
thing but a counterfeit of the spiritual
reality created by divine Love and in
telligence-the subjective state, truly,
Of that moral mind or energy, of which
Jesus said, t'He is a liar, and the father
of it," Just then as a lie is a mere ne
cation, incapable of producing anything
true, so intelligence is incapable of pro-
ducing inharmony, and Love, sickness
OF sin. If, consequently, these seem to