Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 35.djvu/232

under its own canons of procedure, subject to the laws of observation and induction that govern all investigation. The validity of its conclusions must be allowed to rest on the proofs of conformity to these scientific tests.

The charge that Christian Science contemns natural science is as unfounded as that it disregards observation and induction. It is said in “Science and Health”:

Learning is useful if it is of the right sort. History, observation, invention, philosophic research, and original thought, are essential to the growth of mortal mind out of itself, error. The tangled barbarism of learning we deplore—the mere dogma, the speculative theory, the nauseous fiction.

If natural science says one thing more clearly than another, it is this: that law is everywhere, and that there can be no exception to it. Natural science denies miracles, if by a miracle is meant any variation from the regular order of divine cause and effect.

Herein Christian Science is in a line with natural science. Christian Science devoutly believes the wonderful works performed by Jesus, but affirms that his so-called miracles were in accord with the highest law; that they proceeded from the divine Principle of him, which is the Christ or anointed imperial humanity. Miracles are impossible in Science. The highest manifestation of Life or Truth is divine—not supernatural or preternatural, since Science is nature explicated.

The rational claims of natural science against the authority and mere belief of dogmatic theology have all been anticipated and formulated in “Science and Health.” The comparison of “The Devil-Theory,” in the editor's table of the April “Monthly” with the following passage from the chapter “Imposition and Demonstration,” will illustrate this identity of attitude:

God, or good, has not created a mind susceptible of creating evil, for evil is the opposing error, and not the truth of creation. As I understand it, the only evil, or devil, in the universe is made up of such erroneous beliefs as these: that man is a compound of both mind and matter; that a wicked mind can exist in a material form, and both form and mind can be created by the Divine Mind; that God is the author of sin, sickness, and death; and that Mind can be an entity within the cranium, with power to sin ad libitum. In other words, Satan is not a person but an illusion. A lie is the only Satan there is, as results prove. All the discords of earth are lies, and falsehood can not proceed from Truth. In and of itself discord is a falsity. It does not represent the fact relative to God or man.

To give the merest outline of the Principle and rule of Christian Science, as laid down in “Science and Health,” would require a volume. Some of the phenomena and workings of human consciousness, and conclusions from the standpoint of Christian Science, can only be briefly referred to in the space at command.

Man may be defined as a state of consciousness, and the condition of consciousness constitutes the individuality. Consciousness is related to two distinct classes of phenomena. One of these