Observations, both recent and otherwise, indicate that a few words on this subject may be timely. Much may be said of the unwisdom of habitual newspaper reading, which is comparable to a daily plunge-bath in mortal mind—a proceeding more calculated to refresh a sense of the reality of evil, than anything else — and of reading fiction, which, from a Christian Science point of view, is nothing better than being filled with the serpent's meat, dust; still, the most harmful, because superficially most like Truth, is that line of literature which might be styled "Uninspired Metaphysics." In this term is included all the various systems of metaphysics and idealistic philosophy — outside the Bible and Science and Health, and honest, legitimate deductions therefrom — from the times of Plato and Marcus Aurelius to the present; not excepting a sort of literary hybrid, mostly of recent origin, in which it is sought to combine fiction with metaphysics. The possibilities for evil in this line of literature are increased by the fact (constantly brought up in its defence) that it is so easily shown that in many of them are almost numberless statements, perhaps whole pages, wherein the letter of teaching is identical with that which has been our guiding light in the Bible, and which has again been revealed in more clearly apprehensible form in Science and Health.
Of truth there is but one source — God; but are these works in question really truth? Apparently, yes; really, no. They are best described in the words of Paul concerning certain evil-doers, as "having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof," in failing to demonstrate it; and his next words may be fitly added, "From such turn away!" We have no intimation that among them all, teachers or students there was ever a single instance wherein their teachings were lifted above mere theory by so much as a single demonstration of the kind that has so often set the seal of God upon Christianity. Contrast this with Paul's declaration that "the Gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation"; and with the forceful utterance of Science and Health, asserting the inseparableness of understanding and demonstration.
Many who assert that "all is Mind," fail to see that words are doors which, being opened in hearing or reading, admit us to that condition of mind which seeks expression through them. More than this they cannot do. Of them that feed upon human theories and speculations, however truth-like in expression, it will be said, as of other murmurers against "narrowness," "they did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead "; but the words of Truth "are Spirit, and they are Life." Deep and wide is the distinction between a statement which is vital Truth finding expression — communicated from God to man — and apparently the same verbal statement made as the result of a blind search for truth, without a guiding principle whereby to verify or demonstrate — human intellect striving to reach to God from man! A real understanding of Christian Science, as given in the Bible and in Science and Health, includes such consciousness of the all-sufficieney of those revelations as shows the needlessness, as well as the futility, of searching for repetition or endorsement of them from human sources. As Christians whose great aim is to manifest the omnipotence of Spirit, shall we not do well to give strict adherence to those teachings whose genuineness has been so abundantly attested by the "signs following," while refusing those which represent little else than the thought of "ever learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth"?
