DURING the years within the memory of those now living, there have been many persons who knew to a certainty, or thought they did, that there are material laws which not only govern matter, but men as well. They had no doubts; in consequence, they entertained a pitying contempt for those who believed contrariwise. They felt sure that there were no non-physical laws whatever, and that it was crass non-sense for anybody to talk about the government of a Supreme Being, or to talk about divine Principle as the source and explanation of all real law and government, since deific laws and material laws would be wholly irreconcilable.
These persons knew, to their own entire satisfaction, that sickness, death, and their like, were truths in the universe in which man finds himself, being caused by certain laws of disease and death; also, that people could get well, could evade the laws of disease and death, through the aid of material laws which make for health and life, and which therefore sometimes are, and sometimes are not, both contrary and superior to the laws of disease and death. They felt sure that these laws of matter were sometimes to be successfully invoked, and sometimes not, by employing material means and methods. In all this they were quite unaware that their crude materialism amounts to atheism; for when one denies the need of divine Principle and its activities, he thereby denies the existence of divine Principle.
Here it is well to note that those who hold such pronounced views about matter and material law, and who in consequence practically ignore the operations of spiritual law, are in most cases professed Christians, who claim to agree with the teachings of Christ Jesus and his immediate followers; yet Jesus said, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." Besides this, Paul declares, "If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live."
