The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-03-10
LETTERS TO EDITOR
The Absolute in Religion

TO the Edltor or The Age-Herald:
 May l be allowed to express apprecia- ton of both the manner and tone of the letter by w. IT. Dorchester of Pratt City, published in your issue this morning? He reiterates, in a very urbane and pleasing way, the courageous idealism of his faith, but confesses that he does not expect to persuade us to adopt it for practical purposes. His doctrine of prayer seems to be wholly orthodox and useful, with the same limitations as ap- ply to pure idealisn in other directions.
 The trouble with the idealist who in- ssts on disregard of actual conditions is that he is betrayed py life and the universe at every turn. If I insist, for
 instance, that the physical world has no real existence this paper and pen and table I am now employing, my
 fingers, eyes and brain, which am more or less consciously using in the act, the act itself all alike are clearly unreal
 So is the newspaper .a which you will print these words, the linotype machine and operator. your beautiful press your
 most excellent building and so also are the boys who will carry or sell the is- sue. the people who will read it. this vast
 Birmingham, hills and coal and iron and
 business, one huge fabric of vson"
 "an unsubstantial pageant" In that case
 we are shadows dealing with shadows.
 less real than shadows. busy with un-
 real thoughts and words and things.
 Your correspondent pleads for the Ab-
 soute. which is God. as the only real
 He does not reflect that he cannot live
 in the Absolute any more than his wings
 could get along in ether without air but
 that he must live conditioned by the
 relative facts. The proposition that two
 space, time, nor measure, for these are
 relative facts. The propositio nthat two
 and two make four, resarded absolutely,
 is without any meaning. But I very
 greatly mistake the look of things if Mir
 Dorchester attempts to get along without
 que regard to that proposition. My Christian Science friends have often shown excellent business heads: but busi- ness is purely a relative affair. Indeed the very essence of the Christian faith is that the Absolute has voluntarily and
 historically entered into our relative
 world. suffered it's sorrows, delighted in its joys, and further, that He continues to do so, has always been doing so. l desire to go on record as believing that all juggling with this actual world of relative conditions, pretending that they do not exist. is fraught with the eravest ethical results. Neither Mrs Eddy nor Mir. Dorchester, nor anyone else can so much as imagine life that is not relative. girded a:i around with conditions We are to so use these con- [ ditions. not as though they were final or ultimately satisfying, but as instruments of our training to sincerity. simplicity, spiritual unity with God But we would have no God in our knowledge unless we had been permitted to find Him con-
 ditioned in the universe and brought so within the reach of our experience.
 Therefore. Mir Editor please go ahead and act as, though I had actually and really written these words. and that Mr. Dorchester will read them. The other view would. not work. Mir. Dorchester does not believe in hospitals nor in the | existence of diseases. but he apparently does believe In the existence of floods and of sufferers thereby. I am grateful for this. and to know that Christian Science believers have paid TOT relief
 of the sufferers It Is not logical but il /, is very beautiful and. thank God very human. So he and they and we must
 go on living and loving ''till the day
 dawns and the shadows flee away
 GEORGE EAvES. Birmingham. March 2. 1914.