ALL who have precipitated and then analyzed the sediment of that brand of materialistic philosophy which has become impregnated with fatalism, have found it really teaches that human beings are no more than choice aggregations of predestinated protoplasm, and therefore that religion can be nothing better than a solemn hoax. It would be worth while for one to map out before the mind's eye the country, with its roads and byways, into which such a view could introduce him. It is a country of fogs and darkness, of quicksands and marshes, of pitfalls, traps, serpents, fierce beasts of prey; with no singing birds, no fair and fragrant flowers, no sunshine, no rainbows, no stars above; a country of revolting brutalities, and of no inspiring ideals or incentives whatever. If one's meditations still linger with the theme, he will discover in due time that the foregoing description applies to every phase of materialism, alias atheism, and that all its foods are fatal and all its waters poisoned; for materialism is a falsehood which enslaves, just as Truth is the deliverer from bondage.
Truth comes to the unmanacled consciousness to awaken it from its slumbers, even as the morning sun comes to the gladdened hills to fashion their clouds into golden chariots that sweep through the eastern gates of the sky; while the dewy earth smiles amid her flashing jewels and bursts into rapturous song as myriads of birds in fields and woodlands greet the coming day. In due course the consciousness thus emancipated and rejuvenated, finds that its entire horizon is more and more brightened, broadened, uplifted, purified, and that the darkening clouds are disappearing. It discovers more and more fully that the disenthralling energies of Truth are indeed infinite, all-powerful, all-wise, all-present. How could it be otherwise?
Surely any concept of religious truth is erroneous which would limit or measure the universality of its beneficent power and activity. These have no limiting horizon, no circumference. That is not Truth which is not infinite and eternal, "the same yesterday, and today, and forever." That is not Truth which is not self-energizing, overmastering, and victoriously adaptable to every form, phase, and presentment of falsehood. Men may arbitrarily classify our human discords as sin or sickness, but they are each and all falsehood, and no falsehood is immune from the domination of Truth. On page 208 of "Miscellaneous Writings" Mrs. Eddy has impressively said, "This is the law of Truth to error, 'Thou shalt surely die.'"
