There is an old apothegm to the effect that every man can be reached if one but know enough to take the right road. That this road is the only right way of approach goes without saying, and to discern and follow it evidences that wisdom in dealing with men without which one is sure to blunder to a degree that hazards success in his efforts to help them. No one is called to exercise this wisdom more certainly or more constantly than the exponent of Christian Science who is seeking to awaken responsiveness to its healing truth in what might be called unbelieving intelligence.
It is pitifully true that so-called Christian civilization has developed very many representations of a class who might be fittingly though paradoxically named "truth-seeking agnostics." Further, not infrequently it is found that the parents of these "unbelievers" were earnest Christian people who were so anxious that their children should think and do just what they themselves had always thought to be Christianly true and right, so insistent that they "go to church and be good," that is, unquestioningly accept and conform to orthodox belief and its requirements, that a rebellious reaction was brought about from which they have never recovered. Usually such men deeply respect the honesty and sincerity of their forbears and ofttimes they will express regret that they are less earnest and devout than were they, but they freely criticize their coercive methods and affirm that they have no use whatever for their religious beliefs. Such men may give convincing evidence of regard for every Christian virtue, a love for all that is true and beautiful and good. They will aver that they are truth-seekers and even say. "I wish I had your faith; " nevertheless they may call even the asserted existence of the Christian's God "an unwarranted assumption" and balk at any and every statement which one grounds thereon! They are good men and have not separated themselves from participation in that eternal quest which in all time has characterized every noble and aspiring nature, but they have fallen into the mental habit of unbelief, and how to reach them has become a problem which we are not likely to solve if we are unthoughtful or untactful and so, unwise.
Jesus said, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me," and it is safe to say that the impressiveness and winsomeness of his words and works would be seen in the instance of every critic of churches and churchmen were these last but lifting up the Christ-idea in a life which is free from superstition, inconsistency, and ill-logic. The Ingersols and the Bradlaughs have not reviled the Master or his teaching, but they have discerned the hypocrisy, cant, and general unworthiness of many professed Christians, the fallacy and untenability of much of their dogma, and in so far their criticism, as we are compelled to concede, has been quite as legitimate and withal serviceable as it has been severe.
In the endeavor to win men of this type who despite their critical attitude of mind greatly need and are actually longing in their hearts for the saving truth. Christian Scientists have a great advantage in that they frankly concede the proposition that undemonstrable beliefs have little or no value; that unscientific statements deserve to be discarded, and that they are ready to submit their so-called "theories" to the practical tests of the laboratory of demonstration. These concessions will not fail to impress the honest inquirer favorably, and ordinarily they will secure a patient hearing, and if one is adequate to the presentation of his case, he will merit the "Well done, good and faithful servant. " which honors and rewards his success in awakening new and redemptive trains of thought.
In counseling those who face such an opportunity Mrs. Eddy commends an appeal to reason, to that logical order of thought which begins with some unquestionable fact and thus establishes the mutual agreement or common ground imperatively required as a starting point for any profitable discussion. Such a common ground may be found in the recognition of conscious existence, the "I am" which no one hesitates to avow. Along with this affirmation of individual existence the doubter will, in all probability, be willing to concede that this self-conscious being is not self-existent; that only the ultimate cause and creator can be self-existent, and hence that man is an effect which must be explained in keeping with the requirements of that "law of sufficient reason" which is a fundamental of all sane thought and which declares that every effect has and must have an adequate cause, a fact to which Mrs. Eddy gives emphasis when she says (Science and Health, p. 170), "Spiritual causation is the one question to be considered, for more than all others spiritual causation relates to human progress," and on page 207: "There is but one primal cause. Therefore there can be no effect from any other cause, and there can be no reality in aught which does not proceed from this great and only cause." The way is thus opened to inquiry as to the nature of this effect, this self for which an all-impelling rationality demands that we posit a sufficient explanation.
One is thus brought face to face with the question of the nature of present consciousness, and he is at once reminded of the worderful powers, capacities, and achievements of history's great men, the marvels of their insight and invention, of their utilization and command of natural law, their artistic discernment, and their impelling moral sense. One recalls the subtle complexities of the problems they have solved, as for instance in determining the distance, size, movement, and physical constituents of the heavenly bodies, and their relations to each other, as expressed in locating the moment and pathway of an eclipse which is to take place perhaps a hundred years hence. He is led to think of the marvelous flights of imagination, of the genius displayed in the arts, and of the intuition, the unselfishness, and the spiritual aspiration which have rendered the genus homo at its best "so like a god." Thus recognizing the greatness of men and of what they can accomplish, the exalted nature of the cause and creator in whom, in reality, as Paul has said, they live, move, and have their being, begins to dawn upon the horizon of thought, and one finds himself in the presence of a Being before whom every heart can but be instinctively moved with reverence, and every head bowed in adoring awe. Christ Jesus found a sufficient basis for faith and trust in this supreme Being in considering the lilies of the field, and, as the highest manifestation of intellectual and ethical capacity, man surely makes logical demands for our recognition of a cause and creator whose wisdom and power, goodness and beauty, must be infinite. True self-recognition thus "crieth out for the living God." without whom we are compelled to think the unthinkable, namely, that intelligence is the product of nonintelligence; that man is but another form of mud; that the conceiver and constructor of the universe is a blind, dumb, and indefinable nonentity; that experience in its totality is a colossal contradiction, and that human thinking and aspiration, even at its best, can but despairingly end in chaotic confusion.
If the honest doubter can thus be led to think of the nature of cause as revealed in effect, of infinite Mind as being naturally expressed in its idea, man at his most exalted moment of consciousness, he may be ready to accept the historical verity of the appearing of Christ Jesus as a Prince among men, who as such was able, surely, to speak more knowingly than any other historic character, respecting Him whom he named "Our Father." As affirmed by practically all great thinkers to-day, the denial of the verity of the historic Christ calls for a greater exercise of credulity than its acceptance, and one is very logically led to estimate Christ Jesus' statements respecting the source of being as of the highest value. This point gained, a long step is taken in advance, since the Master taught not only that God is one and that He is Spirit, but that He is Love. He must, therefore, be benevolent; hence nothing evil or baneful can be in or of Him. It follows that not being sustained by or attributable to final cause, evil has and can have no real or eternal existence, and, apart from false, material belief, it has no power and is to be "put off," as is all error, by realizing the demonstrable truth and rood which, destroys it, even as the discernment of a law of mathematics dispels every contradictory belief regarding it. Thus one may be led to see that the fundamental teachings of Christ Jesus and Christian Science are the logical sequences of a proposition which is grounded not only in the inherent and undeniable nature of consciousness, but in the teaching of him who is universally acknowledged to be the wisest and best of all the wise and good known to history. This proposition maintains that the ultimate source of all being is a spiritual intelligence who is wholly good, and that spiritual man and all real things are the expression of His omnipresent activity.
Further, Jesus' teaching that God is Spirit or Mind is a concept which is no less compelling than the recognition of the true self as mental, a thinking individuality and not a physical-stuff individuality. Few sane persons would affirm that the conscious self is physical, and the moment one concedes that God is Spirit and that lie is the immediate and continuous explanation of all true being, that moment His immanence is established and it becomes manifest that whatever he creates and sustains must be like Him: that His kingdom is spiritual and not material. Moreover, this involves the necessary conclusion that the material world is not what it seems to be: that it is not substance, and not ontologically real, but only phenomenally so, a declaration which is accepted not only by idealistic philosophers but by physicists of eminence the world over. As one of these has said. "In explaining matter we have explained it away." Even the average student is now aware that sound and color are not without, but primarily and essentially within, not objective but subjective. They are projected mental concepts. The symphony and the sunset, as a great thinker has declared, "have no existence apart from the unifying action of consciousness: " "the object becomes an object to us only through a constructive activity of our own whereby we constitute it an object of consciousness." "Neither matter, force, nor motion has any such existence as common sense attributes to them." "Things can be grasped by thought only as they are the products of thought." "All real being is in and for consciousness." This understanding of the nature of substance is rapidly becoming the common possession of advanced scientific and philosophical thinkers and other idealistic disciples of Truth, and this fact must beget a bit of wonderment at least even in the mind of the most materialistic, as to whether after all some so-called "visionary dreamers" may not be entirely right.
Materialism is on the wane with thinking people, not only because it does not satisfy the heart nor solve life's deeper problems, but because it is philosophically untenable. A great light is illumining the world of thought. The Christianly scientific concept of God and man which Christ Jesus demonstrated has again savingly appeared. For every "truth seeking agnostic" Christian Science has opened a door of escape from the pitiful unrest, the desolating bewilderment of unbelief. There are those who in the toils of unfaith have reached the point where they are tempted to think that they lack the capacity to believe, the power to know. They wish they could understand, but "after much vain endeavor under the tutelage of well-meaning theologues." as they say, they have about come to the conclusion that they cannot. These are to be lovingly reminded that there are undeniable factors in the self-consciousness of all sane, aspiring men, there are affirmations of truth the contrary of which is simply unthinkable, and that if these are but logically adhered to and built upon they will enable all to get out of a bog which many a man has been led to pronounce "hell itself."
"Seek, and ye shall find," was the Master's counsel and assurance. He who is sure that he is, and who will honestly endeavor to account for himself in the light of Christ Jesus' great illuminating life and teaching, can and will find his freedom in finding God, and to help such a one in his endeavor is indeed a blessed achievement and a very great joy.
