Varying opinions have obtained among Christian scholars in all ages as to the character and value of the service philosophy has rendered the human mind in its effort to attain to absolute truth. Philosophy is the imperial highway along which the pagan intellect has marched with its most stately tread and along which are to be found the memorials of its greatest achievements. Yet these memorials are mostly broken columns, danger signals at best, which point not the way to any positive truth. Still, philosophy has rendered religion important service, though of a purely interpretative and negative character. Its real office is to uncover error. It uncovered polytheism to the Greek or gentile mind, anthropomorphism to the Jewish mind, and is uncovering the errors of sense to the modern Christian mind. It has been called the handmaid of religion, and so long as it serves and does not attempt to usurp the place of inspired truth, it may render valuable assistance; but whenever it begins to mock or revile the higher sense, the injunction has invariably come, "Cast out this bondwoman and her son: for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son."
As Paul says of the law, philosophy may be our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, but there it must leave us, as they left the helpless paralytic, at the feet of Jesus. This illustrates the difference between Christian Science and every human system. Christian Science is demonstrable Christianity. It not only uncovers and destroys sin, sickness. and error of every kind, but it saves the victim from their consequences. Being demonstrable science, it is not concerned about the speculations of any human system. The glory of the age is that one has been found whose fitness for that exalted commission has enabled her to restore this healing and saving truth which for centuries has lain buried beneath the rubbish of scholasticism. As the gospels of John and Paul were not affected by the systems of philosophy prevalent in their day, so the restoration of this gospel truth through Christian Science is not concerned with the question of whether it does or does not agree with the human systems of this age. This does not mean that Christian Scientists are any less ready to honor the great thinkers of all ages; for as there are no people who better understand the power and significance of thought, so there could be none more ready to honor its great historic exponents. But it is truly pathetic to witness how these great beacon lights to struggling human thought have been misinterpreted and misunderstood by those whose pathway they hoped to illumine, just as Christian Science is being misinterpreted and misunderstood by those whom it was intended to bless. Only recently, and very much to my surprise, I read in Mr. Huxley's life of Hume this statement in regard to Hume's philosophy: "It is hardly necessary to point out that the doctrine just laid down is what is commonly called materialism. But it is nevertheless true that the doctrine contains nothing inconsistent with the purest idealism." Much depends on the standpoint from which one is viewing the matter under consideration: whether from the standpoint of a physicist who deals with phenomena as his only reality, or from that of a metaphysician who goes deeper to find the reality, or real truth, behind all physical phenomena. In this connection I am tempted to quote from the late John Fiske's "Crumb for the 'Modern Symposium,'" as follows:—
"The untrained thinker, who believes that the group of phenomena constituting the table on which he is writing has an objective existence independent of consciousness, will probably find no difficulty in accepting this sort of materialism. If he is devoted to the study of nervous physiology, he will be very likely to adopt some such crude notion, and to proclaim it as zealously as if it were an important truth, calculated to promote, in many ways, the welfare of mankind. The science of such a writer is very likely to be sound and valuable, and what he tells us about woorara-poison and frog's legs, and acute mania, will probably be worthy of serious attention. But with his philosophy it is quite otherwise. When he has proceeded as far in subjective analysis as he has in the study of nerves, our materialist will find that it was demonstrated, a century ago, that the group of phenomena constituting the table has no real existence whatever in a philosophic sense. For by 'reality' in philosophy is meant 'persistence irrespective of particular conditions and the group of phenomena constituting a table persists only in so far as it is held together in cognition. Take away the cognizing mind, and the color, form, position, and hardness of the table—all the attributes, in short, that characterize it as matter—at once disappear. . . . Apart from consciousness there are no such things as color, form, position, or hardness, and there is no such thing as matter. This great truth, established by Berkeley, is the very foundation of modern scientific philosophy; and, though it has been misapprehended by many, no one has ever refuted it and it is not likely that any one ever will."
