I know no life divided,
O Lord of life, from Thee.
Carl Spitta.
There are few more striking contrasts than that presented by the respective positions of so-called physical science and Christian Science upon the subject of life. Both begin with human consciousness,—a sense of selfhood and of externality,—but while the one, in its search for life's secret, descends to the study of the lowest forms of material organization and tries to discover an interpretation of the universe in the disclosures of a cell, the other ascends through reason and revelation to that splendid attitude of thought where we may realize that "Life is Spirit, and never in nor of matter" (Science and Health, p. 264). One looks to the solution of the mystery through the microscope, the other through the demonstrable word of Truth. One revels in the possibilities of protoplasm, the other delights in the presence of the Lord and meditates upon His law, both day and night
All save pronounced materialists will agree that we can no more acquire a true concept of life by examining its lesser manifestations through the lenses of material sense, than we can gain a correct idea of a mountain by the measurement and analysis of the sands which have fallen from its summit. In lofty and poetic thought Job has long since answered the ever-recurring question as to the source and explanation of. being. This "wisdom," he says, is found by "a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen. . . . Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living. The depth saith, It is not in me: and the sea saith, It is not with me. . . . Whence then cometh [this] wisdom, and where is the place of understanding? . . . God understandeth the way thereof, and He knoweth the place thereof."
