MATERIALISM, says that life is a phenomenon of matter: idealism that it is a phenomenon of mind or spirit. Christian idealism says that the life-principle is the divine Mind or Spirit. Christian Science idealism says not only is this true, but that Life is eternal; that there is and can he no death in God and His eternal universe. Only the temporal sense of life seems to die. and this seeming will disappear with the full coming of Christ. We read in Science and Health (p. 426): "The human concepts named matter, death, disease, sickness, and sin are all that can he destroyed." The Christian Science ideals are not only inspiring and comforting, but they also increase the human sense of life and begin at once to destroy the love and practice of sin and the fear and the sense of disease and death. They are justified by their fruits.
While in the most absolute sense Life, Truth.' Mind, Spirit. Love, and good mean one and the same thing, our sense of life begins with the desire for good and comes to perfection in every activity and assertion of good. The desire for good is not only the beginning of life for us. but it reappears in every advanced manifestation and activity of good. The desire for good is the first response of the human to God. This desire must of necessity ever take on higher and higher forms, until it becomes quantitatively as well as qualitatively perfect. We cannot desire the most perfect good for one without also desiring it for all, nor for mankind without also desiring it for the whole creation. Desire also becomes hope and hope faith, and faith understanding, and understanding or knowledge of good its conscious possession or realization.
We cannot desire any real good without also hoping for it. and we cannot desire and hope for the best without trusting or believing that it will be realized at some time and in some way. Indeed, love that is pure enough, desire that is strong enough, and sense of need that is great enough, for anything that is dearly good for self and good for others,—these lead one to do more than hope for its realization. Faith itself is horn of such need, desire, and love. And such hope and faith not only justify themselves by bringing to light the good hoped for and believed in, but they are themselves the very fruitage of the idea of providence, and especially of the Christian Science concept of an all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful God and Father, God must at least be as high as the highest desires and hopes and concepts of the best men in their best moments; and we cannot desire the most perfect good for one and for all without also feeling that God desires it and can and will bring it to pass. It is only a step from this faith to the conception and feeling that God is bringing it to pass: and when we can really "believe" that we receive the good we most need, desire, and seek, it is only another step until we know it.
