CHRISTIAN SCIENCE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 955, 27 December 1933, Page 3

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE.

Visiting Lecturer Deals With Its Application. A lecture on Christian Science entitled "Christian Science: Its Demonstrable Application” was given on Sunday afternoon in the St James Theatre by Mr W. D. Kilpatrick, of Detroit. To have proclaimed to the world in an age of crass materialism that matter and the material universe, including mortal or physical man, are simply pictures in individual human thought, figments of the carnal mind, erroneous mental concepts, must have involved more spiritual vision and understanding: more courage, more fidelity, more faith in God and His word than one can readily credit to any human being, said the lecturer. Yet that was what Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer and founder of Christian Science, did. Over fifty years ago Mrs Eddy, in astonishing fearlessness and in the strength of a Godgiven conviction born of divine revelation, proclaimed to the world in her hook, “Science and Health Witft Key to the Scriptures,” the textbook of Christian Science: "There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth: matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal: matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material: he is .spiritual.” Whereupon, front every nook and corner in Christendom came condemnation and revilings. Behold that picture of fifty years ago, and then return with us to the present time: What do we find? An ecclesiastical opposition softened by love and understanding, a world more tolerant and forgiving than it has ever been before, and. strangest of all. the ranks of the physical scientists proclaiming to the world, in the ecstasy of a newborn discovery, the nothingness of the material universe, and its existence only as thought. And thus do we begin to understand, the lecturer concluded. what Jesus meant when He said. "Heaven and earth shall pass away but My words shall not pass away.” That is, this material concept of existence must sooner or later be completely overcome in the consciousness of men and be replaced by the understanding of what constitutes the true heaven and the true earth, or