The devotees of a long-established religious order are always troubled by any show of change. They are not only subject to the dominion of a habit of thought, but never having learned to demonstrate the verity of their religious convictions, discrimination between divine truth and human opinions has been neglected until the beliefs of their fathers have come to wield a controlling influence which rightly belongs to demonstrable truth alone. This false position, together with the indisposition to be instructed which usually attends it, has always been a very great impediment to the spiritual advance of individual experience. It has fixed the mentality of millions, when growth imperatively demanded mobility and responsiveness to new concepts and ideas. When wholesome skepticism has asserted itself, the daring have rallied to the support of a more logical, point of view, and the "dark ages" of erroneous thought have been lighted up with the promise of that day which has dawned in Christian Science.
That a great breaking up of the fallow ground of religious sense is now taking place, is seen in the rapidity with which Mrs. Eddy's teaching is shaping religious thought, far and near. This is manifest not only in the world-encompassing growth of the Christian Science movement, but in that virtual acceptance of its metaphysics which is constantly being revealed in current literature. To illustrate: In a periodical before us, published by the authority of one of the largest evangelical bodies, an extended review is given of a book on "The Cosmic View of Religion," in which the editor enters a vigorous protest against the author's position that "matter is a basal reality." He says: "Were the author speaking of the world of experience, his position could be maintained. But he is not so speaking. 'Matter is a permanent coordinate of Spirit,' he asserts. 'The mind has no conception of anything disassociated from the conditions of matter.' These quotations show that the writer is speaking of ultimate reality . . . and not of phenomena. . . . Such a position, which is pure dualism, may lead logically straight to atheism and to complete intellectual confusion. . . . There must be a basal reality which only in itself is truly self-existent in order to satisfy the human mind."
In closing this remarkable review, the critic adds, "The author's fundamental purpose is philosophy, and -it is anti christian without his knowing it. Philosophically this is a dangerous book ... it assumes positions that are wholly false and untenable, and that end in dualism and mental chaos"! Evidently this editor has seen the imperative need of a philosophical basis for faith; and knowingly or unknowingly he has accepted the position of Christian Science as to the phenomenality of matter and all that pertains to it.
