IN no respect are thoughtful Christian Scientists more entirely at one than in witnessing that their outlook upon life and its problems has been cleared; that they are no longer burdened with doubt and confusion, as they once were and as are the many today respecting vital spiritual truths; in a word, that their understanding of God and His righteous government has been wondrously enlightened. And yet, all those acquainted with the comments of the uninformed respecting Christian Science, have noted how frequently the intimation is conveyed that it makes unusual demands upon human credulity.
This false sense is the more generally entertained and expressed by those who are absorbed in the study of the physical sciences, educated people who in a sense are the most free from theological bias. Indeed the more pronounced so-called skeptics have usually been found among such students, a fact which is explained in part when we remember that the ignorant are largely dominated by fear and superstition, and hence given to some form of propitiatory religious rites. It is explained in part by the fact that, ignoring the limits of the domain of inductive inquiry, well-meaning physical scientists have often made an honest effort to fortify their educated religious faith by the examination of material data, but they have found that their facts prove too much, and coming upon confusion they have been compelled to say "I don't know," and so have drifted into agnosticism.
This is the difficulty with the argument from design which Paley made famous and which has been a kind of stock reference for theologians during the last hundred years. Whatever values it may have for those who, despite the veil of material seeming, discover in nature the evidences of the reign of spiritual law, those who make the mistake of regarding material law as the manifestation of the divine activity, and who undertake to harmonize the teachings of Christ Jesus therewith, are sure to end their labors in discomfiture. The injustice of the tragedy of much human experience can never be made to express the rule of a loving and just intelligence, nor can the goodness and perfection of the divine nature be concluded therefrom. It is just here that the teaching of Mrs. Eddy, in its loyalty to the Christ-concept of God as too pure to behold iniquity, as one to whom every phase and aspect of evil is an abomination, cuts directly athwart that compromising thought which looks upon evil as good in the making, and thus seeks to articulate even the most unendurable things of the material order with the divine government.
