The question is often asked, why do not the thinkers of the age who seem to be so earnestly seeking higher things, the writers, the preachers, the natural scientists, who in so many ways seem to prophesy of Christian Science, and almost point to it with the finger of an unconscious John the Baptist, perceive and follow this demonstrable Truth?
Now all questions are answered by Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, and Mrs. Eddy's other works. Divine Science brings the full revelation of Love, and, as such, it must be complete and perfect, meeting every need. So each one finds his questionings satisfied by daily reading and demonstration of Science, and these fragmentary ideas are offered only as a personal thought-experience, of possible value to those who halt on the ground of this question before seeking for themselves. Out of the keen suffering which came from the contempt of especially brilliant, intellectual friends for Metaphysical Healing,— thinly veiled in its expression by personal regard,— have arisen certain trains of thought. These have connected themselves with the past history of men's research for Truth; for it is the past formulations of thought which each generation absorbs more or less with mother-milk, and which argues against the contradictory Truth of an absolute Science.
Human explanations of Revelation have had a mighty power over men, because they have claimed mighty authority. This is Theology. Human explanations of life and the universe, apart from Revelation, have had almost as powerful a hold on humanity. This is philosophy. It would seem that theology had been worsted by philosophy in history, for theology has clung fast to superstition; while philosophy has gradually grown bolder, and, grasping natural science, logic, and metaphysics by the hand, has set up Revelation as a target which must stand or fall according to whether or not natural reason and discovery can pierce it. To begin with, philosophy timidly called on church for sanction. Now, in fearless criticism, it passes judgment on church and creed. So it would seem to be the controlling thought, representing the resume of human thinking, and claiming all material knowledge, so far as discovered. Certainly it is true, that ages have been dominated by some great philosophic theory, and literature, art, and even theology of these periods have but re-echoed the same thoughts.
Christian Science as Metaphysics falls directly under the criticism of philosophy. It is easy to perceive why human creed and dogma should reject it, but not so easy to see why human reason, that claims continual progress, should not see in it the ultimatum of all research. The fact is, Christian Science does not grow out of any past system of thought. Because of its perfection it stands detached, like a sphere, from all its surroundings. Imagining that human intellect was the soil, we can see how it would understand its own plants and flowers, differing from each other, but composed of the same elements. But how could it understand a flower that had its roots in the sky and blossomed earthward, even though of the same form as the earth plants?
Human thought has ever had some sort of theory about itself to answer its question, "What am I?" The Greek regarded man more as a part of external nature, and reasoned from that standpoint. Jesus chemicalized the world of thought on this point by announcing the warfare between flesh and Spirit. The physical beauty and harmony of the Greek has never been reattained, because the new element of Christianity which rent man from the dust has never ceased to ferment and disturb the material peace of humanity. This was symbolized by the Pharisees' complaint against Jesus for plucking the ears of corn on the Sabbath. What he really broke was not the Sabbath, but their material sense of rest. Unwilling to accept the fact of Spirit as the only reality, yet the new spiritual element which had entered human consciousness with Christianity could not be rejected; and man began striving to reconcile Spirit with matter, holding to both as real and rational. A nobler reason than this was the craving man has ever shown for an absolute and systematic statement of Truth, which is to be found in Christian Science.
The Greek philosophies seemed to supply this need to the early theologians, who were almost as much disciples of Plato, as of Jesus. When Luther dethroned the church, as a material institution, and enthroned the Bible, the philosophic thought became more original and strove to reconcile Plato and Aristotle with Protestantism. Some of these minor philosophers were very naïve. Being face to face with the fact that God was Spirit and infinite, no element could be discovered out of which to create matter: so one of these states frankly and unequivocally that the material universe was made out of nothing. Another one of this group, Boehme, was a naturalistic Theosophist, and accounted for the dilemma in a most conclusive manner by stating that there is a natural contradiction in God Himself which makes evil as much a part of Him as good!
Modern Philosophy, however, soon ceased to include revelation as a phenomenon from which to reason, and set about building a house wholly with human hands. It found man, not self-unconscious in unbroken pantheism, like the Greek, but claiming a mysterious spiritual entity called "a soul." Descartes disposed of this soul in the pinneal gland of the head. Locke declared it was all sensation and we could know nothing except through sensation. This philosophy darkened the art and morals of his age. Berkeley, following on the same line of reason, said that matter itself was only sensation and nothing apart from the mind that conceives it. Hume, carrying on the same premise to its logical conclusion, reasoned that the mind which knows the sensation is in itself a "bundle of sensations," and man was reduced to dust, "without hope and without God."
It would seem that mortal mind had committed a definite suicide with this; but it only took a long breath and emitted — Kant! Just as the physiologist is continually finding new intricacies in the human organism, so the psychologist unrolls further and further the inner thoughts from unconscious mortal mind. After bacteria, what? we ask; and after German Philosophy, what? The microscope says the body is a walking menagerie, and philosophy finds mortal mind a Noah's ark of astounding dimensions, out of which the most contradictory and absurd forms of thought emerge. Kant finds a "spiritual" element in consciousness underived from sensation. This "spiritual" element is nothing more than the universal intuition in regard to time and space. This is "soul," according to Kant, and it is amusing to see what a Babel tower is built on so small a foundation. In 1781 he shut the door on Divine Science by asserting: "Metaphysics as à priòri science of the supersensible is impossible." No man perhaps has ever made more powerful laws against the possibility of man's knowing actual Truth. This century is bound up hand and foot by the webs thus woven, for human intellect has bowed at the feet of the "Critique of Human Reason." Fichte, Hegel and others have built huge systems on this foundation, and now when these show signs of falling, the cry of the philosopher is, "Back to Kant"
Mortal thought has accepted unconsciously the verdict of these mental legislators, and repeats automatically: there are certain things man can know, and certain things he cannot. So humanity stupefies itself with agnosticism, and when the actual voice of living Truth speaks, it answers sleepily, "I know you are only a phase of human belief, partly true and partly false."
In regard to religious thought, we see it branching in three directions. Protestantism was but middle ground, for progressive thought was not long content to worship a material book, perse, any more than a material church. There is a decided movement back to Roman Catholicism, i. e. blind credulity in the confessedly unnatural; another, toward "rationality," the attempt to reconcile revelation with the evidences of matter; a third, toward the pure spirituality of Christian Science, which supports and sustains all good that has ever been manifested by an eternal foundation of Divine reason. The motive of the retrogression may be fear to meet and grapple with the immense problems of the day; that of the second, a strong belief in the material senses; that of the third, a longing for the Infinite, resulting from a great weariness with all human experience.
The wonder is that those rationalistic thinkers of the second class, who seem to be reaching so eagerly toward a scientific basis for Scripture, should not perceive Christian Science. Theology, unless too thick-skinned with conservatism, is trembling at the edicts of natural science and philosophy. It grips the Bible nervously, but those precious instances of spiritual consciousness, called miracles, are dropping through its fingers to the ground. What will hold the priceless words together when the firing of material reasoning is done? But here step in Theosophy and Spiritualism, as pretended witnesses to the spiritual, claiming new evidences for the supersensible. Spiritualism professes to commune with Spirit through physical sense. Theosophy attaches itself to old roots of thought, and includes all religions and philosophies in one contradiction, so huge that it seems to harmonize all lesser sophistries; i. e., that evil and good are parts of one system and God includes all. These theories have crept into advanced theological thought, and lead men to think that, through these psychical and philosophic discoveries, the human senses will at length come to support revelation; not that further revelation will utterly contradict the evidence and reason of the senses, as it did through Jesus.
This belief that there are gleams of Truth in all human systems which must be sought out and separated from error by each individual for themselves, is one of the great mistakes that holds human intellect. If Truth is not a unit, One absolute and inseparable, it is not God. A drop of the ocean contains all the elements of the ocean;— so the smallest perception of the one and entire Truth is a true perception, for, however tiny it be, it contains nothing but Truth, and the unity of Truth. On the contrary, a single element of water mingled with the elements of earth is not water at all, nor will it become water by being separated from earth. Because Truth is and ever has been omnipresent, it would be impossible for man to think and not embody some element of what is true. But even if these elements were distinguished and absolutely freed from surrounding error, (which would be impossible to mortal mind) — Truth itself would be reflected in none of them. "Principle is not to be found in fragmentary ideas." (Science and Health, p. 198, line 3). "Absolute Truth only is true," (Science and Health, 238-22). This unity of Truth, which is God, proves itself by its power. What these scattered elements of Truth in creed and philosophy have never done, and never can do, Christian Science does. Human intellect, accustomed to sit on a throne of judgment and review the world thought, saying this may be true and that not, is astounded by a system that claims to be not only true, but Truth. "Such assertions are not allowed in my realm," says Intellect. "Here in this nineteenth century of progress we will have no dogma, except for ridicule. We propose to take from you what we like, but we discern that very many of the assertions you make are not original. Even from Jesus of Nazareth we must take that claim, for his moral teachings had already been voiced by pagan Philosophers. We dissect you and find that the statements ' God is All': 'God is Good,' etc., have been made centuries ago. All we can perceive that is new in this system is the application of these facts to the treatment of disease."
Now it is the unity of Science and Health, which is its Truth and its power, and to which this material analysis of intellect is blind. To return to the simile before used: suppose water had never been known or seen, and suddenly some one should discover the exact combination of gases which make it, and which proved correct. Suppose all the world had felt the need, and was seeking this recipe, and the learned chemists who had spent their lives in research should take the new discovery, and say, "Why, there is nothing new or worthy of remark in this recipe! We have had hydrogen and used it for years. Oxygen is also well known to us. The only surprising thing is that any one should claim that these long discovered elements should have effects attributed to water."
"But it does have the effect of water. It cleanses us; it satisfies our thirst," those who tried the recipe might insist.
"We don't need to try it," the chemists would reply, "because our learning shows us at once the absurdity. We believe there is water in everything, earth, and air, and fire; and it is possible that sometime men may be wise enough to separate it from the surrounding elements."
The philosopher, Bacon, voiced a fact when he said that men did not really love Truth, for to find it would be to stop all speculation. Students of Divine Science know that when the human will has once held its voice and listened to the Absolute, then, and then only, will the in flood of pure thought satisfy the human intellect itself, and open its eyes to an infinite world, not for speculation, but for investigation and possession.
Along beside this history of human thought which has been lightly touched on, there has run a humble little thread of real spiritual experience down through the ages, which, like a rill of pure water, has fed "the oldness of the letter" with drops of spirituality, and kept the Bible alive. This must have been so, or we would never have had the consciousness which discovered Christian Science. At times this spiritual light has been bright enough to sway all human thought with some ray of Reality, and thousands have died gladly for Principle. At other times it must have been hidden by peasants in their cottages, by women in their hearts. Individually, we can trace back a chain of thought, — certain prayers, certain experiences,— which, the day we read Science and Health, suddenly joined connection with the ever lasting fibers of the universe. This is an unwritten history, unrecognized by human science or philosophy, that has softened and furrowed the human heart for the reception of Truth. Only hearts so prepared are good ground for the seed.
Frequently, a great preacher or poet will utter something that will cause those slightly acquainted with the subject to say, "How near he is to Christian Science?" Yes, near, may be, but on how different a foundation! The man of large intellect sometimes reasons himself out of self and is freed for an aerial flight. In this balloon ascension, he may approach for a moment the mountain-peaks of reality, and announce their existence. But the material is still real to him, and he is attracted back to it, with nothing gained except the increased hope to wing his steps. He may be even further away than the one who is proving through prosaic and painful experience the unreality of the mortal. There is no reasoning so deep and true as that drawn from patient and unpoetical living. Such reasoners seize eagerly of the fruits of Science, while the philosophers are dissecting its roots, and comparing them with their own theories as to what correct roots should be.
When the phenomena of Christian Science are more generally recognized, human thought will stop aghast. It will recast its categories, and search its tomes in vain to find a precedent or explanation. It will find nowhere, except in the Scriptures, an account of the consciousness, the man, which Spirit is now beginning to bring out through this Truth. Spiritualism, Theosophy, and Mesmerism, blind the eyes of the world by seeming to establish a basis in the material senses for these manifestations of life and character. Their day, however, will soon be over. Human intellect will perceive its own lack. Mind is eternally concrete and not abstract. Mortal thought, studying itself, swells with its own vacancy, and the more it knows of itself, the further from Truth it is, because its only fact is nothingness. Finally it must explode with its own emptiness, or rather, the pressure of omnipresent Reality will crush it, and like the dragon of the Fairy Queen, there will be nothing left. Then those who have been watching its development will turn to lean on the substance of Understanding, and begin to unlearn their laborious consciousness of matter. Like the Samaritan woman, human intellect will tire of its five husbands, its five material senses, tire of drawing water that quenches not thirst, and at last will recognize a divine visitant in the Truth who again stops to drink at its well, that she may give the Eternal in return.
