Always add, always proceed; neither stand still nor go back, nor deviate. He that standeth still proceedeth not; he goeth back that continueth not; he deviateth that revolteth."—
In the course of some interesting remarks on the coming "Spiritual Renaissance," Talcott Williams of the Philadelphia Press says: "The material progress and discovery of the past forty years are but the scaffolding which will fall to show that advancing humanity has again erected a temple to the worship of the Spirit"; and upon this same thought, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Rev. Mary Baker Eddy, has truly said that
"New Birth and Immortality," by Rev. Mary Baker Eddy."this age seems reaching out toward the perfect Principle of things, pushing toward perfection in art, inventions, and manufactures. Why, then, should religion be stereotyped, and we not obtain a more perfect and practical Christianity? It will never do to be behind the times in the things that are highest and most essential. Human skill only foreshadows what is soon to be manifested as of divine origin."
One of the most significant things connected with the great Parliament of Religions, held during the year of the Columbian Exposition in the city of Chicago, was the character of the metaphysical motto chosen as the best expression of the aims of that unique and original Congress,— "Not things, but men—Not matter, but Mind." A Christian Scientist would have had a difficult task had he tried to state the ruling thought and aim of the present age in a more scientific and telling way. That the progress of the world has been marvelous during the last thirty or forty years no student of our times will deny. With a rapidity that bids human skepticism and conservatism flee, one marvel after another has forced its way through the dark night of materialism into the general mental and practical acceptance of the race. The most remarkable feature of all the great discoveries and wonders of recent years is the fact that as a whole they tend as type toward the idea of "Men not things, — Mind not matter," and away from physics toward Divine origin, away from organic animal evolution to an immaterial basis for all things.
Professor J. P. Cooke of Harvard University writes: "There is nothing in science so improbable or inconceivable that it may not be realized." Such a statement is a vital admission inasmuch as it shows that the very ability of the human mind to conceive of a new idea of progress, be it in art, invention, commerce, manufacture, or motive power is a mental prophecy of its ultimate realization. This in no wise means that the human mind is gradually evolving a science of spiritual life. This it cannot do for it is not created by nor included in the one Law of Divine Principle. But by the law of antitheses or opposites these upward strides of humanity as shown in the discovery and perfection of such wonders as the telescope, microscope, photographic camera, electric telegraph, cable, telephone, phonograph, electric light, X-rays and vitascope, the wonderful typesetting machine, and scores of other marvels of invention given to the world in recent years; all these things are but evidences that the limitations that have long bound the minds of men are fast being overcome, and that the human mind is being educated literally out of itself; yea, it is escaping its own self-imposed bondage, and this glorious escape means its final destruction as a false claim of Intelligence and the appearance of the Mind of Divinity that really has been and is the great invisible power behind all human, moral, and spiritual growth throughout all time, and in all lands. All genuine progress toward the ideal of perfection, health, holiness and immortality is of necessity spiritual progress.
An interesting fact connected with the most startling inventions of recent years is this, that nearly all illustrate metaphysical Truth and serve to confirm the statement that "All causation is Mind, and every effect a mental phenomenon."
Science and Health. All tend toward the doctrine of the Allness of Mind and the nothingness of matter, and every one in some degree tends to destroy the idea of time, space, corporeality, as sentient substance-matter, as well as the reliability of the testimony of the physical senses. The telescope destroys space, bringing millions of worlds invisible to the naked eye into vivid view, revealing law and order in thousands of planetary systems. The telegraph brings continents and far distant lands by cable and wire into instantaneous touch and communication. Recently a message was sent over twenty-eight thousand miles in less than sixty minutes. Moreover telegraphy without wires is now a promised step, the currents of the air and those of the ocean being utilized to make connection. The telephone transfers thought with its own verbal expression and sound thousands of miles and we hear a person speak three thousand miles distant as distinctly as if they were in our very presence. Within a year the vitascope has been invented and presents on a huge canvas life-size pictures of a vast parade, or a great mass-meeting, a full stage play at a theatre, or a speaker upon a platform, with every change of facial expression and gesture perfectly given, not only with the detailed truthfulness of an instantaneous photograph, but with every motion, act, and change. Thus with the aid of the phonographic vitascope we can sit in our own homes and enjoy the privilege of seeing William E. Gladstone come, life-size, in all the realism of motion and action before us and deliver some interesting oration on a burning topic of the day. We can hear his voice, detect every modulation, see each and every movement, and when he has finished to all intents and purposes we will have spent a profitable evening with one of the greatest leaders of the English race. We have long learned to know an author's innermost heart through his works, and have for years walked side by side with certain great minds through the continued study of their writings. But now men can both see and hear those whom they have learned to love as teachers, authors, leaders, reformers, and friends. The phonograph enables us to hear in our sitting-room a concert, a lecture, or a sermon in all the reality of audible sound. The photographic camera reproduces in all the naturalness of the instantaneous process views of almost limitless variety from the spots on a planet, to the train moving at the rate of sixty miles an hour. And we are promised that soon all the hues and colors of nature will be fully and accurately reproduced in photography. The microscope unfolds a universe of wonders under our very gaze, though unseen to the natural eye and unknown to the personal senses. The electrical light has almost annihilated physical darkness and has transformed the realm of illumination into a great world of possibilities, and now Tesla, the great inventor, tells us of a new form of light that can be secured and kept in hollow glass tubes a yard long, and hung in a room as one would place a stick across two hooks, will brilliantly light the entire apartment.
The famous X-rays of Professor Roentgen now penetrate matter, yea, reveal its mental nature, proving it to be an image of thought. Or as Professor Wilhelm Ostwald of the University of Leipsic, Germany, describes it when he states "Matter is a thing of thought which we have constructed for ourselves rather imperfectly to represent what is permanent in the change of phenomenon." Grant Allen, the well known author, in the course of an article on the late Professor Tyndall, thus speaks of matter: "The charge of materialism could only be brought against such a man by those abject materialists who have never had even a glimpse of the profounder fact that the universe as known to us consists wholly of mind and that matter is a doubtful and uncertain inference of the human intelligence." This idea that matter is a thing of thought, an externalization of the human mind, and not an entity or element having independent life apart from thought or mentality, is gaining ground very rapidly in the world of thinkers.
Says Professor Clifford: "Every molecule of matter possesses a piece of mind-stuff." And Professor Haekel asserts that "all bodies are equally animated; wherever there is corporeal matter there is mental power." By the use of the new typesetting machine, which does the work of about five expert typesetters thousands of words can be put into form in a newspaper in a few moments, and knowledge? is thus generally diffused over a world already in a state of acute and chronic mental and physical indigestion caused by generations of fruitless effort to assimilate such things as the perpetual history of crime, the details of disease, and the demoralizing records of human error and erroneous systems of religion and philosophy. A newspaper of over forty finely printed pages can be now purchased for five cents. If all this reading matter proclaimed the beauty of holiness, the grandeur of the law of brotherly love, the certainty of the control of Right, the triumph of the law of Love and of international arbitration among the nations of (the world, the peace of a clean heart, a square life, and an unfaltering faith in the supremacy of Good, what agents of progress they would be! When will our great twentieth century papers herald to a waking world the reappearance of the Christianity of the Teacher of Palestine, which heals the sick, binds up the brokenhearted, and points the way out of the prison of doubt, speculation, and materialism into the great open firmament of Truth.
Reviewing even in a brief way the signs of our times and giving careful heed to the rapid and general acceptance of the basic ideas of our blessed Faith, can we not readily see that the day is passed for critics of Christian Science to longer assert that its extreme transcendental doctrine of the unreality of matter is without support from the world of Science at large? On every side are evidences of the truth of the Rev. Mary Baker Eddy's great basic statement which is really the keystone of our religio-philosophical system —"All is Mind, there is no matter." Modern discovery and invention, while not divine in themselves, nevertheless lead thought from effect to cause and tend toward a metaphysical basis for all true being and action. Poor mortal man who has so long considered himself a creator and a lord of creation finds his own inventions are fast forcing him to retire from the active government and control of the very sphere over which he has heretofore thought he held undisputed sway. The telescope proves that he fails to see a billioneth part of the heavenly bodies, and the microscope reveals worlds that his mortal eyes can never hope to see. All kinds and sorts of machines in the factories of the world, each doing the work of twenty active men, step by step are forcing him out of established positions of work. The phonographic vitascope reproduces the personality, action, and voice of the singer, actor, or speaker, and thus his personality immediately begins to count for less. People will no longer flock to some great hall or auditorium to see and hear him for he can be enjoyed on canvas in the quiet home sitting-room. The X-rays penetrate and make nothing of his long admired matter body. He sits for a photograph and behold we find a skeleton in a graceful pose upon a chair, and with the improved rays we are indeed fortunate if even this much of mortal man is seen, if conclusions can be drawn from the following dispatch in the New York Sun, of November 14, 1896: "Portsmouth, O. The remarkable result of a flashlight photograph taken at the office of Attorney——in this city, is attracting considerable attention among photographers and the general public. In the picture Mr. G. is sitting on a chair and through him is distinctly seen the back of the chair with a newspaper that was on the chair's back. The outline of a safe is also shown through his body."
With the so-called progress of surgery, medicine, hygienic treatment, and the multiplication of hospitals and sanitariums is to be seen also the rapid increase of incurable diseases and new disorders. With the development of electricity comes increased danger to the race from its various applications. Are these affirmations pessimistic? We answer no, and for this reason, that mortal man is being forced by these very things to escape from his own serfdom and false basis of living and to seek above and apart from these temporal conditions the solid foundation of the Science of Being, and his spiritual estate as the image of God.
