| [2] | Cope’s theory, in “Darwinism To-day,” Kellog, p. 287. |
SEVENTH MEETING
Ruth brought with her a “Christian Science” prayer. I said I would read it aloud at the meeting on Christian Science. One line in the prayer was, “purified from the flesh.” Ruth guessed, before I said anything, that I objected to this line. She believes the body is “something to be overcome.” All the others and myself disagreed with her.
I said: “I, who believe in endless progress, believe the means themselves to be good and wonderful. Unless this moment were good, nothing it led to could be wholly good.”
Ruth said: “The body is something unreal, unessential, which we do not keep.”
I answered: “We keep nothing but what we always possessed, the power of growth.” Ruth says we get certain new truths, and then keep them. She tries to think that my idea and Christian Science agree in every way, except that we use different language. But she has doubts and qualms. Then we spoke of “New Thought.” I said I thought most of what is called so was unanswerably true, only there seemed to be an enmity between “New Thought” and good English. Marian agreed with me. She said she could have no respect for a man who used poor English. I would not say that, for I had received too much information from men who did not know how to give it. But, I said, I had often missed information rather than rewrite a book for myself mentally, before I could read it. Marian’s father had read aloud to her, from a “New Thought” book, this sentence: “The seen is unreal, and the unseen is real.”
“I don’t believe that,” she said. “Do you?”
“No,” I answered; “I believe everything is real, the seen and the unseen. There is nothing but reality.”
I also said my chief objection to all these cults was that they insisted too often on physical health as the aim of life. Virginia said: “But just think, if we had not to be concerned about our bodies any more, if we were perfectly well, how much we could do!”
“Yes,” I answered, “that is true; but still it is not an end, but only a means.”