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CHAPTER XXVI

CHARLES KINGSLEY

F the Victorian Era was the crowning age of woman,

and this glory of womanhood perfected in the develop

ment of her own nature and her own qualities, wedded to but not infused with those of man (a later development of the new twentieth century) the Victorian Era was also the great age of the natural sciences. Indeed, with the unprecedented knowledge of and classification of phenomena, the very word Science began to take on a new meaning for mankind. This change, while it could hardly have been prevented, harbinger as it was of such a wide expansion of thought and of such precious gifts to the world, was at the same time the author of a certain confusion; for with the inrush of new ideas and fresh images, the term Science became wrested from the realm of metaphysics and applied more and more to the study of physical facts. To the man of the sixteenth century "Science" would have meant philosophy and logic, to the man of the nineteenth it had come to mean geology, botany, biology, chemistry, etc. Now Science is a word derived from the Latin verb "sciri," to know, and so means knowledge. The Victorian discoverer in the universe of knowledge added to this definition that of law. Science became to him a knowledge of laws affecting the "modus operandi" of creation as he saw it around him. In the excitement of examining effects as they appeared to the physical senses, he ceased to remember that Science was originally sovereign over a mental and moral realm. The word swung round from being a

religious and intellectual term, and became a term denoting a classification of physical phenomena, and thus associated with a gas or a mineral, rather than with a mode of thinking.

But the new "Scientist" did not hurriedly forget God or lose his respect for the Bible. The religious spirit in which the British Association of 1865 undertook its work would astonish modern agnostics who are prone to deny every theory that is not based on the evidence of the physical senses or the human brain. This is the manifesto of the Association signed by six hundred and seventeen Scientific men in that year:

"We conceive that it is impossible for the Word of God, as written in the book of nature, and God's Word written in the Holy Scriptures to contradict one another, however much they may seem to differ. We are not forgetful that physical Science is not complete but is only in a condition of progress, and that at present our finite reason enables us only to see through a glass darkly, and we confidently believe that a time will come when the two records will be seen to agree in every particular. We cannot but deplore that Natural Science should be looked upon with suspicion by many who do not make a study of it, merely on account of the unadvised manner in which some are placing it in opposition to Holy Writ. We believe that it is the duty of every student of Science to investigate Nature simply for the purpose of elucidating truth, and that if he finds that some of his results appear to be in contradiction to the written Word, or rather to his own interpretation of it (which may be erroneous) he should not presumptuously affirm that his own conclusions must be right and the statements of Scripture wrong. Rather leave the two side by side till it shall please God to allow us

to see the manner in which they may be reconciled and, instead of insisting on the seeming difference between Science and Scripture, let us rest in faith upon the points in which they agree."

These were humble, reverent words with which to approach a new order of life, and the spirit of sincerity and of service rendered their physical discoveries of lasting benefit to mankind. The mistake was that they investigated effects, and from effects argued or tried to argue back to cause. And, since material phenomena include both good and evil in promiscuous array, they could not then differentiate, and indeed never have arrived at differentiating between what was God's creation and what was the creation of the human mind. So fascinating was this study of a human universe at the point of a visible human manifestation, its secrets probed by microscope, and telescope, and mathematical calculations, that it swept poets, priests and philosophers alike from its path. The study began at the wrong end. Tennyson forsook the clearer theology of In Memoriam and the Idylls of the King to swim in the doubtful waters of Evolution and Pantheism, and none of the great men of the time were wholly free from trying to make matter the vehicle for expressing spirit.

Mrs. Eddy remained true to the primitive definition of Science as belonging to philosophy rather than to physics, and to theology in the original and best sense. Her search was always after cause, not effect, and she maintained the pure and perfect definition of God in which the early Christians interpreted the universe.

"The universe, like man" (she declares), "is to be interpreted by Science from its divine Principle,

God, and then it can be understood; but when explained on the basis of physical sense and represented as subject to growth, maturity, and decay, the universe, like man, is, and must continue to be, an enigma." (Science and Health, p. 124.)

Today physical Scientists divide matter into atoms, atoms into electrons and electrons into positive and negative force. Fifty years ago Mrs. Eddy declared that

"We tread on forces. Withdraw them, and creation must collapse. Human knowledge calls them forces. of matter; but divine Science declares that they belong wholly to divine Mind, are inherent in this Mind, and so restores them to their rightful home and classification." (Science and Health, p. 124.)

Does Mrs. Eddy deny, then, the existence of pain and sorrow, disease and death, and all the mutations and experiences of visible human life? No. She does not deny their existence in human experience; but she analyses this experience and demands an explanation of its origin. She finds that all these mortal experiences do not come from Truth, but from the mist of human error, even that mist described in the second chapter of Genesis, that lie of evil which forms a wrong concept of creation altogether, and declares that God made it, when it is palpable that God had already finished His creation without any mention of the dust of the ground, and had pronounced it very good. The Adam and Eve creation then is unrelated to God for

"God is seen only in the spiritual universe and spiritual man." (Science and Health, p. 300.)

But while to the materialist the denial of matter and of