Through Christian Science we can look beneath the surface of things to see the essential significance of events and institutions. University departments encompass, in concentrated form, some highly important human thinking. The human mind's aim to understand and analyze itself is the substance of psychology. The attempt of the human mind to record and interpret its past—and to gain a more clearly defined analysis of its present and future—constitutes history. The human mind's endeavor to systematize its sense of a physical environment is the substance of physics. And human consciousness tries to find an underlying pattern, and the relationship between the above—and other modes of thought—in philosophy.
The university is a place where the human intellect is trying to discover its boundaries and break its bonds. There, just about every assumption and sense appearance is questioned and analyzed at one time or another. A multitude of concepts and frames of reference are juxtaposed and in competition. It is a place, too, where youth are forming ideals that may influence the rest of their lives and future society. It is a place, moreover, where— according to its own ideals—the truth is sought at any cost to dogma. Far from seeing the university as inhospitable to Christian Science, we might well view it as an area in which Science must be represented.
With tremendous foresight, Mrs. Eddy has made provision in the Manual of The Mother ChurchSee Man., Art. XXIII, Sect. 8; for Christian Science organizations at universities and colleges. Perhaps we are only just beginning to glimpse the extent of Mrs. Eddy's perception in making this provision.
The Science of Truth—as Mrs. Eddy calls her discovery of the basic universal truth of being so evident in the life of Christ Jesus—can be seen as the ultimate end of the scholar's work, regardless of his field. Christian Science can permeate the university consciousness and leaven it. We may tend to fence in the relevance of this Science, confining it to moral and spiritual areas. But by broadening our estimate of the potential of Science to enrich the human intellect, we will extend our usefulness to humanity at large.
As well as helping the physical sufferer and the sinner, it is clear that Christian Science can assist the intellectual. It can give the natural scientist and the technologist a new dimension. A divinely metaphysical position brings the thinker and researcher an original, penetrative, bond breaking viewpoint. The Science of Truth is relevant to every aspect of academic studies. Its place in this area belongs far more to the future than to the past, for its possibilities will be recognized increasingly.
Although the moral, spiritual, and intellectual cannot really be separated, nevertheless we may need to be much more awake to the intellectual implications of Christian Science in addition to the moral and spiritual. Its potential here is so far largely untapped.
In coming decades the university might well become a place where Christian Science makes well-recognized advances in helping mankind. This Science is not centered in dogma, form, ritual, and tradition, but in ideas: spiritually-based ideas. The Science of Truth has vital things to say about history, showing it to be concerned essentially with the dawning in human thought of spiritual truth. Again, Christian Science—in its treatment of Mind as infinite, and its disclosure of the modes of mortal mind—has a leavening contribution to make in the field of psychology. Also, although the phrasing of the following question may be simple, its implications are immense: How many of us have realized the enormous import of its teaching that Truth is the only medicine?
As we shed anti-spiritual thinking, we glimpse with growing conviction the fact that Christian Science is in the vanguard of the most advanced academic thinking and so can offer some direction to the rearguard. It is in the intellectual forefront, as well as being in the moral and spiritual forefront, of human progress. It can show humanity the way out of the mortally intellectual into the inspirational.
The more spiritual and free human thought becomes, the more quickly humanity develops. Many modern thinkers are recognizing that the general assumptions of human thought are what determine the fields and direction of scientific research and discovery. Human thinking imbued with Christian Science is conducive to human progress, including progress in natural science. Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health, "Spiritual causation is the one question to be considered, for more than all others spiritual causation relates to human progress." Science and Health, p. 170; In that God is immutable Truth, isn't it natural for the truth-seeker to turn in that direction? The perceptive author of Deuteronomy notes, "He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he." Deut. 32:4;
Mrs. Eddy says of the Rules and By-Laws in the Church Manual: "They were impelled by a power not one's own . . . . They sprang from necessity, the logic of events,—from the immediate demand for them as a help that must be supplied to maintain the dignity and defense of our Cause; hence their simple, scientific basis, and detail so requisite to demonstrate genuine Christian Science, and which will do for the race what absolute doctrines destined for future generations might not accomplish." Miscellaneous Writings, p. 148.
Christian Science organizations at universities and colleges have a high degree of authorization. They are an inseparable part of Mrs. Eddy's demonstration of Church, and a special provision for young students and faculty who are living and working in the university. And, of substantial significance, they are a provision for the university also.
