Some of its hasty critics, without giving the subject proper attention, find fault with Christian Science because in its scientific analysis of the human problem it treats the conditions known as matter and evil as negative quantities. A respectful investigation would reveal that Christian Science does not differ in this method from the sciences of music and mathematics. It is evident that Science cannot be formulated upon a basis of contradictions. Whatever appears to the students of either of the sciences referred to, in the course of their work, which does not proceed from its fundamental and accepted law, or from the practice of its rules, is set aside as an error. The presence of these errors is universally regarded as a mistake. They appear through ignorance, and disappear when truth is more clearly understood,—a fact that establishes their illusive nature.
Because of its scientific character Christian Science also requires a fixed standard for the guidance of its students, and by which they may work at their problems intelligently. It has the same right and the same reason to discriminate between realities and unrealities, between truth and error, and to give them their proper value and significance, that the science of music has to decide between harmonious and discordant notes, or the science of mathematics to declare what is the right and the wrong relation of numbers. The Science of being, wherefrom mortals must learn the truths of health, goodness, and spirituality, should not give more reality to error than do these.
The sole beneficent purpose of any science is to lead mortals out of error, not to leave them in it. To this end they are instructed to reject all evidence that contradicts, or that would impair if accepted, the integrity of its standard. The musical student, for instance, is taught not to be deceived into accepting a discordant note for the correct one, though no less audibly apparent to the material sense of hearing. Christian Science distinguishes between good and evil, between spirituality and materiality, as the true and the false in human experience, but it does not deny that evil and material conditions seem real to the sense that takes no cognizance of God. It does not, however, accept appearances for reality, otherwise it would not be Science. In Christian Science God is defined as Love, the absolute, divine Principle of all real being, the infinite creator, lawgiver, intelligence, substance, and Life. How, then, can it define as a reality aught that in its nature and influence is contrary to God; that does not acknowledge the Divine control, and that claims another intelligence and creator? What scientific alternative has it but to designate all such conditions as errors, and to repudiate them accordingly?
