or God. It can be grasped only through the spiritual or CHRISTIAN SCIENCE: A RELIGION real sense. A recent dictum of physical science holds that OF TRUTH, LOVE, AND LIFE the five physical senses are reducible to one, the sense of TRIUMPHANT touch. Thus a mortal hears, sees, tastes, and smells through the sense of feeling, or sensation in matter. In A Lecture On Christian Science Christian Science the validity of the material senses is by DR. JOHN M. TUTT, C.S.B. challenged, and these alleged senses are revealed as coun- of Kansas City, Missouri terfeits of the spiritual senses, which true senses all are Member of the Board of Lectureship of The Mother Church, reducible to one - spiritual understanding And so spir- The First Church of Christ. Scientist. in Boston. Massachusetts itual power, or understanding, that is, true feelings, It is now generally known that in the year 1866 Mary stands superior to sensuousness, or sensation in matter. Baker Eddy discovered the Principle, laws and rules of When all is said, that superiority stands as the central scientific Christianity, and named her discovery Chris- point of Christian Science, and when all is done, that tian Science. This discovery, which she defined as the superiority is the demonstration of Christian Science in "divine laws of Life, Truth, and Love," (Science and human experience. Health p107) was revealed to her under divine inspiration It is literally true that we feel our way in Truth, Life, and through spiritual understanding of the ~ibg,yet and Love, and as our thought and lives become spiritual- Mrs. Eddy did not offer the world a new religion. Indeed ized we feel our way unerringly, triumphantly. That feel- the world was not asking for a new religion. It had then, ing is the sixth sense of Spirit. It cannot be described, as it has now, a surfeit of religiou.s beliefs. It is said that of defined, isolated, or located materially, but it witnesses the Christian religion alone there*have been over three the healing and saving power of God operating in human hundred variant sects. But the world did need, desper- consciousness and in human lives. The provable, and oft- ately, to be healed of disease, of sin, of poverty, and limi- times proved superiority of spiritual power over sensuous tation and of discord, -it needed the true interpretation would appear to leave evil at a disadvantage, and so it of thc re1if;iuri uC Jesus Chist. Rcsponsivc to humanity's does. But since evil is never destroyed until it acknowl- need, Mrs. Eddy wrote the Christian Science textbook, edges itself to be nothing - that is, ceases to present its Science and Health with Kzy to the Scriptures, and estab- claims to reality, to existence, to presence, and to power, lished her church on the Scriptural and spiritual founda- we are admonished by both the Bible and the Christian tion of Christ healing, and so justified in precept and Science textbook always to be alert to error's false claims practice, by healing the sick and saving the sinning, the and active against them. We must not merely assume denomination known as The Church of Christ, Scientist. error to be nothing, but must actually prove its nothing That this tree of God's planting is bearing good fruit in ness by destroying its claims with spiritual power. In the renewed health and corrected lives, no informed person same way and to the same degree that we come to know, can deny. In betterment of mind, morals, body; in to feel, the presence and power of good, we come to feel increasing spirituality; in Chrisiian character and broth- the utter absence of evil. Spirituality and sensuousness erly kindness, its beneficiaries bear witness to the restor- cannot both occupy the same ground in our conscious- ative, reformative, regenerative effect of scientific ness. Which shall it be? Christianity operating in human affairs. Christian Sci- Genuine Metaphysics ence is indeed a religion, a religion of Truth, a religion of Christian Science then, commits the student to what Love, a religion of Life, triumphant. Mrs. Eddy terms (Science andHealth p550), "the true and The Central Point of Christian Science spiritual Life," and the consciousness of which should In Science and Health (p454) Mrs. Eddy tells us: "The appear now even as it will appear hereafter. Such a com- superiority of spiritual power over sensuous is the central mission arrays one splendidly against all that is unlike point of Christian Science." Sensuous power, so-called, is Spirit. Christian Science is the only religion in the world's the supposed power of mortal mind, or mind in matter, history to reason logically that the opposite characters of and it is comprehensible only to the physical senses, in Spirit and matter, !heir completely antithetic essence and other words, to itself alone. Spiritual power, on the con- qualities, determine one to be true and the other false, trary, is that thought force emanating from the one divine one to be the real and the other the unreal. Accepting the Mind. Hence it is the expression of the only real power, declaration of the Master: "God is a Spirit," Christian CHRISTIAN SCIENCE: A RELIGION OF TRUTH, LOVE, AND LIFE TRIUMPHANT Science reaches the conclusion that Spirit is the real and ing of things into thoughts. Thus viewed, abnormalities matter is the unreal, and that however real to the human are seen to be primarily mental, states of consciousness sense matter may seem to be, matter, the unreal, does not externalized. Jesus indicated this necessity to resolve actually exist. things into thoughts when he said: "All these evil things The word metaphysics which, correctly defined, is come from within, and defile the man." Jesus referred all applicable to Christian Science and descriptive of its ide- material things and events first to their origin, the so- alism, means literally "beyond matter." But the processes called human mind. Thus he struck at the source of all of the so-called human mind are not beyond matter. evil. The next step in salvation may be termed rejection Material psychology, or brainology, as taught by all sys- of error. This process consists in realizing these mental tems of religion and philosophy other than Christian Sci- states to be false or supposititious - nothing masquerad- ence, deals with the human mind as resident in brain ing as something. Jesus indicated that step when he said matter, and so finds the human mind to be dependent to the seemingly convincing argument of personal sense: "Get thee behind me, Satan." To Jesus, wrong concepts upon matter for manifestation. Christian Science declares the alleged metaphysics of the human mind to be were a palpable falsity, unreal, hence nonexistent, and so to be rejected as unworthy of recognition or credence. spurious, because at no point do such so-called mental Jesus was no muckraker. He stirred up error only to systems reach beyond matter. Only that is gekuinely metaphysical which is beyond both matter and the destroy it. He knew that evil uncovered is powerless, but that evil is not uncovered till its nothingness appears to essence of matter, - beyond the so-called human mind. consciousness. The third and final step in salvation is Christian Science, truly metaphysical, recognizes the uni- replacement of error with Truth. Christ Jesus indicated versal intelligence, the infinite divine Mind and its man- this restorative ministry of Truth when he declared, "I am ifestation, ideas, to be reality, and deals with the human, not come to destroy, but to fulfill." True metaphysics thus finite mind and its manifestation, material things, as brings the Christ, the healing and saving truth of God, unreality as a misstatement or misunderstanding of the divine Mind, to bear upon the errors of belief, to the real Mind, a misunderstanding of God and His ideas, elimination of the evil and the establishment in human man and the universe. Christian Science declares that this consciousness of good. Now, what is the Christ? Indeed, deception can be corrected so that materiality will disap- what could replace a wrong thought but a right idea? pear from human consciousness, the only place it could Christ is the spiritual idea of salvation, or Truth, which appear, and the correct statement, revealing the ideas of comes to human consciousness to reverse, reject, and pure Mind, will appear in consciousness. And Christian replace whatever is wrong in human experience; indeed Science teaches and is proving that because the human eventually to replace so-called human life itself, and to body expresses human thought, correction of human reveal the Life divine. Jesus was the individual in whom thought has such an effect on the human body as to elim- the Christ, or spiritual idea of salvation, wrought the inate the abnormalities comprised in the whole catalog of complete transformation, thus furnishing the full exam- evil, disease, crime, poverty, all discord, and death. And ple for you and for me and for all. His was the one perfect Christian Science avers that it is both scientific and example of reversal, rejection, and replacement of every Christian for this brood of errors to be disposed of even evil thought and thing, the rejection of sin, disease, pain, now, in practical and proper sequence, pending the final and even the last enemy, death, and the replacement of correction of the basic error, the belief in the existence of evil with good, of matter with Spirit. Thus Christ Jesus is matter and mortal mind, and pending the recognition of the Saviour through what he was and what he did, and we the eternal spiritual facts of being.