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Illogical Christian Science

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 27, 1907

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 84, No. 26.

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Illogical Christian Science

By ALBERT H. DARROW

ALBERT H. DARROW
Both in ancient and in modern times schools of idealism and of realism have existed, and the idealistic and realistic philosophers have contended with each other for the supremacy.
The doctrines of idealism are these: that material things are delusions; that matter does not exist; that nothing exists except ideas and principles; that the testimony of our eyes, ears, etc., is unreliable; that God is a principle, not a person; and that the real man is merely a divine idea, not a real or corporeal being.
Among the pagans, idealism was taught and cherished merely as a philosophy. Among the partly paganized Catholics and Protestants, it has been so modified and blended with materialism as to teach that the earth and its inhabitants are material, but that heaven and its inhabitants, including the spirits of dead men, are immaterial.
The first attempt to revive pure idealism in Christian lands, and place it upon a religious foundation, was made by Mrs. Mary Baker Glover Eddy, in the year 1866, in some of the Atlantic States of America. She says that “in the year 1866 I discovered the Christ Science, or divine laws of life, and named it Christian Science. God had been graciously fitting me during many years for the reception of a final revelation of the absolute divine principle of scientific being and healing.”—“Science and Health,” page 107.
On page 113 she makes the startling affirmations, that “there is no pain in truth, and no truth in pain; no nerve in mind, and no mind in nerve; no mind in matter, and no matter in mind; no matter in life, and no life in matter; no matter in good, and no good in matter.”
It would be almost useless to remind any student of ecclesiastical history that this is Manicheism, pure and simple, and that Manicheism is not Christianity.
On page 213 she tells us that “sound is a mental impression, made on mortal belief. The ear really hears not.” On page 257 she says that “if matter, so-called,is substance, then spirit, matter’s opposite, must be shadow; and shadow can not produce substance. . . . Mind creates his own likeness in ideas, and the substance of an idea is very far from being the supposed substance of non-intelligent matter.” If an idea is a perfect likeness of God, then what is God but a mere idea?
On page 254 we find that, according to Mrs. Eddy, “spirit and its formations are the only realities of being. Matter disappears under the microscope of spirit. Sin is unsustained by truth, and sickness and death were overcome by Jesus, who thus proved them to be forms of error.”
On page 301 she informs us that “mortal man seems to himself to be material substance, but man is image.” But on page 302 she says that we should “remember that the harmonious and immortal man has existed forever, and is always beyond and above the mortal illusion of any life, substance, and intelligence as existent in matter. This statement is based on fact, not fable.” Here she has both a mortal man and an immortal man existing in one person—yet not a person, but an idea, image or reflection of a principle—the one man being subject to illusions, the other free from them.
On page 303 she tells us that “God without the image and likeness of himself, would be a nonentity, or mind unexpressed. God would be without a witness or proof of his own nature. Spiritual man is the idea of God, an idea which can not be lost, nor separated from its divine Principle.” Is the mind of God necessarily a nonentity when it is unexpressed in man? Does the outward expression of a principle or attribute constitute the principle or attribute itself? What is the value of logic which has no meaning? If man is an idea of God, and can not be lost, what shall we do with the parable of the lost sheep?
“Man can not be separated for an instant from God, if he reflects him.”—“Science and Health,” page 306. “Because soul is immortal, soul can not sin.”—Id., page 468. “God, or good, could never make men capable of sin. . . . Evil is but an illusion.”—Id., page 480.
These declarations would seem sufficient to assert the impossibility of human beings committing sin; yet, on pages 204, 205, Mrs. Eddy says that “the error which saith soul is in body, mind is in matter, and good is in evil, must unsay it, and cease from such utterances; else God will continue to be hidden from humanity, and mortals will sin [do that which is impossible] without knowing that they are sinning [performing impossibilities], will lean on matter instead of spirit.” Can man sin unconsciously?
The absolute impossibility of stating the doctrines of “Christian Science” idealism in comprehensible terms, and its apparent self-contradictions, should convince any rational mind that its premises and conclusions are false.
Watts, Cal.