Natural science being the study of matter, of that god which the human mind has set up besides or instead of the only true One. it must naturally be of interest to examine, in the light of Christian Science, to what results this study has led, and which stage of development it has reached in the day when the true nature of Spirit, as the only substance, has been revealed again.
Natural scientists having to rely in their investigations exclusively upon the physical senses, naturally considered substance that which to these senses appeared as such, Matter, the general name given to this supposed substance, upon closer investigation, increased in might and glory and reached the culminating point of its power in the so-called atomic theory. The physical senses were evidently all the time looked upon to be in man, what windows are in a house, which allow the impressions from the outer world to reach the interior in all their genuine perfection. This theory united under its banner more scientific men than any hypothesis concerning the visible universe ever did before. But to-day it is fast being deserted by its followers, its foundations are destroyed, and soon it will be ready for the graveyard of uselessness. Natural scientists, with that honesty peculiar to their profession, regardless of traditions, cost, and past labor, never hesitate to tear down their own structures as soon as they are really proved to be weak or faulty in some points. That the discoveries of prominent investigators actually prove that the assumption of a self-existent, dead substance, floating in space, is absurd, will soon be a generally accepted fact among the students of material science. Of the physical senses, the one that is most important for the researches of natural science is the sense of sight; optics has established the fact that the eye is not a window, but a very complicated structure, which is unable to give a correct impression of external objects; one might say, that instead of conveying the form and color of things to the mind, it manufactures them itself, and this sham product is what we see; how great the difference is from the reality, natural science is unable to state. The other physical senses are partly proved to be of a similar nature, and the inference that all of them are equally unreliable is inevitable. What we perceive by means of them, is nothing but effects, produced by certain unknown external agencies acting upon them and exciting their mechanism to work. Being of such a complicated and mysterious nature, the agencies or causes which arouse their action may be of a character totally different from the effects which we perceive. To illustrate: Suppose a mouse running accidentally over some parts of a complex machinery starts it going; one part after another of the machine begins to work, till finally it smashes itself and all its surroundings; here we have a mighty and complicated effect from a small and quite harmless cause. The action of our senses and its influence upon our life must frequently be of a similar character and result from like harmless causes. Thus natural scientists are fast drifting into a tight corner; from their investigations they may soon form these conclusions: We knew that we were unable to directly perceive ultimate realities and causes; but through examinations of effects and phenomena we hoped to be able to trace those causes; but now we find that the phenomena which we have been examining all the time are no genuine phenomena at all, but simply more or less unreliable images and impressions created by the physical senses. Why! humanity has been living all the time in a world of its own making, an imaginary world, which may be totally unlike the real one. Natural scientists are forever excluded from the possibility, by their methods, of finding out in what manner and to what degree the action of the senses differs from that of organs or means which would reveal the true nature of the universe, because in all their observations, directed to discovering the nature and modes of working of these senses, they are absolutely limited to the use of the same unreliable servants; they have to work in a circle, like a man in a boat, who tries to accelerate its speed by pulling on a rope attached to one of the seats—a desperate outlook. It may be logically inferred, that soon natural scientists will reduce the physical universe to nothing but more or less illusory products of the senses. These are an impenetrable veil which separate them forever from the real universe.
But the vast labor of natural science has not been in vain; on the contrary, it has performed most invaluable service in the growth of human thought out of itself, in fitting humanity for the reception of the revelation of the Truth, and in providing means for its rapid spreading; for through demonstrating that the universe is governed by immutable laws, and that nothing happens by chance, it has produced and developed a general scientific sense which is not satisfied with mere theories, but asks for facts and rational explanations, and thus has successfully checked and counteracted superstition and wild speculation; it is pulling down the idol of humanity, matter, from its throne, by proving it neither independent substance nor power; it has demonstrated the unreliability of the human senses, has established easy and rapid means for traveling and communication of thought, and thus prepared the way for the final appearing of the Truth, The words of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker G. Eddy, p. 537: "The condemnation of mortals to till the ground means this,—that they should so improve material belief as to destroy it, by germs tending spiritually upward." are thus well illustrated and already partly fulfilled.
