"A truth to be lived"

I have had my copy of Peel's book Mary Baker Eddy: Years of Trial since February 1976. It was a gift from a church friend, inscribed by her on the flyleaf just prior to my departure from Perth to Sydney where our first child was born a few months later. What a tender memory this kind gift has for me now.

I love that texts reveal new hues upon re-reading. The topic of empiricism is one of interest in our age. A quick Google search explains that in philosophy, an empiricist is one who "supports the theory that all knowledge is based on experience derived from the senses" and offers as an example phrase: "most scientists are empiricists by nature". 

Furthermore it explains that empiricism is based on "the theory that all knowledge is based on experience derived from the senses".

In the light of these definitions, Peel's comments on p. 11 and 12 arrest attention. He compares Thomas H. Huxley's loyal devotion to the then current natural science (including unwavering support of Darwin's theory of evolution) with Mary Baker Eddy's adherence to her discovery of Christian Science. This latter Science, he describes as “an eternal rather than an empirical science, a truth to be lived rather than a methodology to be worshipped”.

Julie Swannell