For centuries philosophers have theorized about idealism and realism, and voluminous works have been published on these subjects. Some thinkers have caught glimpses of underlying realities, others have felt the impulsion of new ideas and have come up with brilliant but fragmentary insights into the physically intangible nature of the universe and man. But has philosophy ever really explained the spiritual ultimate of all things?
However diligently one may pursue the various schools of thought, one eventually finds that opinions wrested from material observation lack the most significant phenomenon of all—the Christ—as a base for their inspiration. Mary Baker Eddy's spiritual discovery in 1866 set forth as religion, but also as pure Science, an exact, demonstrable knowledge of God and His Christ. Hers was a Christianly scientific idealism, based on the spiritual facts of Science, not on the so-called facts of matter. Because it is not a human philosophy but a divine revelation, the divinely-based reason and logic of Christian Science necessarily separate it from all other systems.
Mrs. Eddy predicts the ultimate effects of this revelation of divinity upon mankind, and the infinite scope of its demonstration: "When every form and mode of evil disappear to human thought, and mollusk and radiate are spiritual concepts testifying to one creator,—then, earth is full of His glory, and Christian Science has overshadowed all human philosophy, and being is understood in startling contradiction of human hypotheses; and Socrates, Plato, Kant, Locke, Berkeley, Tyndall, Darwin, and Spencer sit at the feet of Jesus."Miscellaneous Writings, p. 361;
