In this age of atomic research, in which mankind are being taught to take a radically new view of matter and are alarmed by what they are learning, there is no more arresting question than one posed by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. In fact, she evidently attributed such importance to the question that she included it in one of the subjects of the periodically recurring Lesson-Sermons in the Christian Science Quarterly, as if she had envisaged that the world would be called upon to face and ponder this subject in the not too distant future. It reads, "Is the Universe, Including Man, Evolved by Atomic Force?" What foresight on the part of our Leader, who made her great discovery, which she named Christian Science, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, to have put a question that is certain to arouse every thinking person in the second half of the twentieth century.
The interesting part about this subject is that it refers to man as well as to the universe. Modern physical research has been reducing matter to atomic force. Mankind are slowly being educated in this new development. So far as the universe around them is concerned, they have thus far spent little thought on the subject. To them, matter has remained solid substance, at least according to sense testimony. It is only of recent years that they have become alarmed by announcements of destructive forces which may be released as a result of the reduction of matter to energy.
Mrs. Eddy's question regarding the evolution of man by atomic force is very startling and may be said to be addressed to every individual identifying himself as a material body. Mankind have accepted the theory of solid matter, therefore of a solid material body, produced materially. They have accepted this theory without probing it to its roots, because it is supported by sense testimony and by the schools of thought resting on that testimony. But they never understood it. They could not, for it is only a theory. Now material sense testimony and the theories based on it are being shaken by the very schools which have been upholding them. This spells their doom.
