Books by Mary Baker Eddy

SCIENTIFIC THEISM
page 130

SCIENTIFIC THEISM

   In the May number of our Journal, there appeared a
review of, and some extracts from, "Scientific Theism,"
by Phare Pleigh.
   Now, Phare Pleigh evidently means more than "hands
off." A live lexicographer, given to the Anglo-Saxon
tongue, might add to the above definition the "laying
on of hands," as well. Whatever his nom de plume
means, an acquaintance with the author justifies one
in the conclusion that he is a power in criticism, a
big protest against injustice; but, the best may be
mistaken.
   One of these extracts is the story of the Cheshire Cat,
which "vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end
of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained
some time after the rest of it had gone." Was this a witty
or a happy hit at idealism, to illustrate the author's following
point? -
   "When philosophy becomes fairy-land, in which neither
laws of nature nor the laws of reason hold good, the
attempt of phenomenism to conceive the universe as a
phenomenon without a noumenon may succeed, but not
before; for it is an attempt to conceive a grin without
a cat."

MISC 217

   True idealism is a divine Science, which combines in
logical sequence, nature, reason, and revelation. An
effect without a cause is inconceivable; neither philosophy
nor reason attempts to find one; but all should conceive
and understand that Spirit cannot become less than
Spirit; hence that the universe of God is spiritual, - even
the ideal world whose cause is the self-created Principle,
with which its ideal or phenomenon must correspond in
quality and quantity.
   The fallacy of an unscientific statement is this: that
matter and Spirit are one and eternal; or, that the phenomenon
of Spirit is the antipode of Spirit, namely,
matter. Nature declares, throughout the mineral, vegetable,
and animal kingdoms, that the specific nature of all things
is unchanged, and that nature is constituted of and by
Spirit.
   Sensuous and material realistic views presuppose that
nature is matter, and that Deity is a finite person containing
infinite Mind; and that these opposites, in suppositional
unity and personality, produce matter, - a
third quality unlike God. Again, that matter is both
cause and effect, but that the effect is antagonistic to its
cause; that death is at war with Life, evil with good, -
and man a rebel against his Maker. This is neither
Science nor theism. According to Holy Writ, it is a
kingdom divided against itself, that shall be brought
to desolation.
   The nature of God must change in order to become
matter, or to become both finite and infinite; and matter
must disappear, for Spirit to appear. To the material
sense, everything is matter; but spiritualize human
thought, and our convictions change: for spiritual sense

MISC 218

takes in new views, in which nature becomes Spirit; and
Spirit is God, and God is good. Science unfolds the fact
that Deity was forever Mind, Spirit; that matter never
produced Mind, and vice versa.
The visible universe declares the invisible only by reversion,
as error declares Truth. The testimony of material
sense in relation to existence is false; for matter can
neither see, hear, nor feel, and mortal mind must change
all its conceptions of life, substance, and intelligence,
before it can reach the immortality of Mind and its ideas.
It is erroneous to accept the evidence of the material

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