UNITY OF GOOD

BY

MARY BAKER EDDY

AUTHOR OF SCIENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES

Registered U. S. Patent Office

Published by The Trustees under the Will of Mary Baker G. Eddy

BOSTON, U. S. A. 

Authorized Literature ofTHE FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST, SCIENTISTin Boston, Massachusetts

_Copyright, 1887, 1891, 1908_BY MARY BAKER G. EDDY_Copyright renewed, 1915__Copyright renewed, 1919_

_All rights reserved_

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Contents

Caution in the Truth _Does God know or behold sin, sickness, and death?_

Seedtime and Harvest _Is anything real of which the physical senses are cognizant?_

The Deep Things of God

Ways Higher than Our Ways

Rectifications

A Colloquy

The Ego

Soul

There is no Matter _Sight_ _Touch_ _Taste_ _Force_

Is There no Death?

Personal Statements

Credo _Do you believe in God?_ _Do you believe in man?_ _Do you believe in matter?_ _What say you of woman?_ _What say you of evil?_

Suffering from Others' Thoughts

The Saviour's Mission

Summary

Unity of Good

Caution in the Truth

Perhaps no doctrine of Christian Science rouses so much natural doubt andquestioning as this, that God knows no such thing as sin. Indeed, this maybe set down as one of the "things hard to be understood, " such as theapostle Peter declared were taught by his fellow-apostle Paul, "which theythat are unlearned and unstable wrest . . . Unto their own destruction. " (2Peter iii. 16. )

Let us then reason together on this important subject, whose statement inChristian Science may justly be characterized as _wonderful_. 

_Does God know or behold sin, sickness, and death?_

The nature and character of God is so little apprehended and demonstratedby mortals, that I counsel my students to defer this infinite inquiry, intheir discussions of Christian Science. In fact, they had better leave thesubject untouched, until they draw nearer to the divine character, and arepractically able to testify, by their lives, that as they come closer tothe true understanding of God they lose all sense of error. 

The Scriptures declare that God is too pure to behold iniquity (Habakkuki. 13); but they also declare that God pitieth them who fear Him; thatthere is no place where His voice is not heard; that He is "a very presenthelp in trouble. "

The sinner has no refuge from sin, except in God, who is his salvation. Wemust, however, realize God's presence, power, and love, in order to besaved from sin. This realization takes away man's fondness for sin and hispleasure in it; and, lastly, it removes the pain which accrues to him fromit. Then follows this, as the _finale_ in Science: The sinner loses hissense of sin, and gains a higher sense of God, in whom there is no sin. 

The true man, really _saved_, is ready to testify of God in the infinitepenetration of Truth, and can affirm that the Mind which is good, or God, has no knowledge of sin. 

In the same manner the sick lose their sense of sickness, and gain thatspiritual sense of harmony which contains neither discord nor disease. 

According to this same rule, in divine Science, the dying--if they die inthe Lord--awake from a sense of death to a sense of Life in Christ, with aknowledge of Truth and Love beyond what they possessed before; becausetheir lives have grown so far toward the stature of manhood in ChristJesus, that they are ready for a spiritual transfiguration, through theiraffections and understanding. 

Those who reach this transition, called _death_, without having rightlyimproved the lessons of this primary school of mortal existence, --and stillbelieve in matter's reality, pleasure, and pain, --are not ready tounderstand immortality. Hence they awake only to another sphere ofexperience, and must pass through another probationary state before it canbe truly said of them: "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord. "

They upon whom the second death, of which we read in the Apocalypse(Revelation xx. 6), hath no power, are those who have obeyed God'scommands, and have washed their robes white through the sufferings of theflesh and the triumphs of Spirit. Thus they have reached the goal in divineScience, by knowing Him in whom they have believed. This knowledge is notthe forbidden fruit of sin, sickness, and death, but it is the fruit whichgrows on the "tree of life. " This is the understanding of God, whereby manis found in the image and likeness of good, not of evil; of health, not ofsickness; of Life, not of death. 

God is All-in-all. Hence He is in Himself only, in His own nature andcharacter, and is perfect being, or consciousness. He is all the Life andMind there is or can be. Within Himself is every embodiment of Life andMind. 

If He is All, He can have no consciousness of anything unlike Himself;because, if He is omnipresent, there can be nothing outside of Himself. 

Now this self-same God is our helper. He pities us. He has mercy upon us, and guides every event of our careers. He is near to them who adore Him. To understand Him, without a single taint of our mortal, finite sense ofsin, sickness, or death, is to approach Him and become like Him. 

Truth is God, and in God's law. This law declares that Truth is All, andthere is no error. This law of Truth destroys every phase of error. To gaina temporary consciousness of God's law is to feel, in a certain finitehuman sense, that God comes to us and pities us; but the attainment of theunderstanding of His presence, through the Science of God, destroys oursense of imperfection, or of His absence, through a diviner sense that Godis all true consciousness; and this convinces us that, as we get stillnearer Him, we must forever lose our own consciousness of error. 

But how could we lose all consciousness of error, if God be conscious ofit? God has not forbidden man to know Him; on the contrary, the Father bidsman have the same Mind "which was also in Christ Jesus, "--which wascertainly the divine Mind; but God does forbid man's acquaintance withevil. Why? Because evil is no part of the divine knowledge. 

John's Gospel declares (xvii. 3) that "life eternal" consists in theknowledge of the only true God, and of Jesus Christ, whom He has sent. Surely from such an understanding of Science, such knowing, the vision ofsin is wholly excluded. 

Nevertheless, at the present crude hour, no wise men or women will rudelyor prematurely agitate a theme involving the All of infinity. 

Rather will they rejoice in the small understanding they have alreadygained of the wholeness of Deity, and work gradually and gently up towardthe perfect thought divine. This meekness will increase their apprehensionof God, because their mental struggles and pride of opinion willproportionately diminish. 

Every one should be encouraged not to accept any personal opinion on sogreat a matter, but to seek the divine Science of this question of Truth byfollowing upward individual convictions, undisturbed by the frightenedsense of any need of attempting to solve every Life-problem in a day. 

"Great is the mystery of godliness, " says Paul; and _mystery_ involves theunknown. No stubborn purpose to force conclusions on this subject willunfold in us a higher sense of Deity; neither will it promote the Cause ofTruth or enlighten the individual thought. 

Let us respect the rights of conscience and the liberty of the sons of God, so letting our "moderation be known to all men. " Let no enmity, nountempered controversy, spring up between Christian Science students andChristians who wholly or partially differ from them as to the nature of sinand the marvellous unity of man with God shadowed forth in scientificthought. Rather let the stately goings of this wonderful part of Truth beleft to the supernal guidance. 

"These are but parts of Thy ways, " says Job; and the whole is greater thanits parts. Our present understanding is but "the seed within itself, " forit is divine Science, "bearing fruit after its kind. "

Sooner or later the whole human race will learn that, in proportion as thespotless selfhood of God is understood, human nature will be renovated, andman will receive a higher selfhood, derived from God, and the redemption ofmortals from sin, sickness, and death be established on everlastingfoundations. 

The Science of physical harmony, as now presented to the people in divinelight, is radical enough to promote as forcible collisions of thought asthe age has strength to bear. Until the heavenly law of health, accordingto Christian Science, is firmly grounded, even the thinkers are notprepared to answer intelligently leading questions about God and sin, andthe world is far from ready to assimilate such a grand and all-absorbingverity concerning the divine nature and character as is embraced in thetheory of God's blindness to error and ignorance of sin. No wise mother, though a graduate of Wellesley College, will talk to her babe about theproblems of Euclid. 

Not much more than a half-century ago the assertion of universal salvationprovoked discussion and horror, similar to what our declarations about sinand Deity must arouse, if hastily pushed to the front while the platoons ofChristian Science are not yet thoroughly drilled in the plainer manual oftheir spiritual armament. "Wait patiently on the Lord;" and in less thananother fifty years His name will be magnified in the apprehension of thisnew subject, as already He is glorified in the wide extension of belief inthe impartial grace of God, --shown by the changes at Andover Seminary andin multitudes of other religious folds. 

Nevertheless, though I thus speak, and from my heart of hearts, it is dueboth to Christian Science and myself to make also the following statement:When I have most clearly seen and most sensibly felt that the infiniterecognizes no disease, this has not separated me from God, but has so boundme to Him as to enable me instantaneously to heal a cancer which had eatenits way to the jugular vein. 

In the same spiritual condition I have been able to replace dislocatedjoints and raise the dying to instantaneous health. People are now livingwho can bear witness to these cures. Herein is my evidence, from on high, that the views here promulgated on this subject are correct. 

Certain self-proved propositions pour into my waiting thought in connectionwith these experiences; and here is one such conviction: that anacknowledgment of the perfection of the infinite Unseen confers a powernothing else can. An incontestable point in divine Science is, that becauseGod is All, a realization of this fact dispels even the sense orconsciousness of sin, and brings us nearer to God, bringing out the highestphenomena of the All-Mind. 

Seedtime and Harvest

Let another query now be considered, which gives much trouble to manyearnest thinkers before Science answers it. 

_Is anything real of which the physical senses are cognizant?_

Everything is as real as you make it, and no more so. What you see, hear, feel, is a mode of consciousness, and can have no other reality than thesense you entertain of it. 

It is dangerous to rest upon the evidence of the senses, for this evidenceis not absolute, and therefore not real, in our sense of the word. All thatis beautiful and good in your individual consciousness is permanent. Thatwhich is not so is illusive and fading. My insistence upon a properunderstanding of the unreality of matter and evil arises from theirdeleterious effects, physical, moral, and intellectual, upon the race. 

All forms of error are uprooted in Science, on the same basis wherebysickness is healed, --namely, by the establishment, through reason, revelation, and Science, of the nothingness of every claim of error, eventhe doctrine of heredity and other physical causes. You demonstrate theprocess of Science, and it proves my view conclusively, that mortal mindis the cause of all disease. Destroy the mental sense of the disease, andthe disease itself disappears. Destroy the sense of sin, and sin itselfdisappears. 

Material and sensual consciousness are mortal. Hence they must, some timeand in some way, be reckoned unreal. That time has partially come, or mywords would not have been spoken. Jesus has made the way plain, --so plainthat all are without excuse who walk not in it; but this way is not thepath of physical science, human philosophy, or mystic psychology. 

The talent and genius of the centuries have wrongly reckoned. They have notbased upon revelation their arguments and conclusions as to the source andresources of being, --its combinations, phenomena, and outcome, --but havebuilt instead upon the sand of human reason. They have not accepted thesimple teaching and life of Jesus as the only true solution of theperplexing problem of human existence. 

Sometimes it is said, by those who fail to understand me, that I_monopolize_; and this is said because ideas akin to mine have been held bya few spiritual thinkers in all ages. So they have, but in a far differentform. Healing has gone on continually; yet healing, as I teach it, has notbeen practised since the days of Christ. 

What is the cardinal point of the difference in my metaphysical system?This: that _by knowing the unreality of disease, sin, and death_, youdemonstrate the allness of God. This difference wholly separates my systemfrom all others. The reality of these so-called existences I deny, becausethey are not to be found in God, and this system is built on Him as thesole cause. It would be difficult to name any previous teachers, save Jesusand his apostles, who have thus taught. 

If there be any _monopoly_ in my teaching, it lies in this utter relianceupon the one God, to whom belong all things. 

Life is God, or Spirit, the supersensible eternal. The universe and man arethe spiritual phenomena of this one infinite Mind. Spiritual phenomenanever converge toward aught but infinite Deity. Their gradations arespiritual and divine; they cannot collapse, or lapse into their opposites, for God is their divine Principle. They live, because He lives; and theyare eternally perfect, because He is perfect, and governs them in the Truthof divine Science, whereof God is the Alpha and Omega, the centre andcircumference. 

To attempt the calculation of His mighty ways, from the evidence before thematerial senses, is fatuous. It is like commencing with the minus sign, tolearn the principle of positive mathematics. 

God was not in the whirlwind. He is not the blind force of a materialuniverse. Mortals must learn this; unless, pursued by their fears, theywould endeavor to hide from His presence under their own falsities, andcall in vain for the mountains of unholiness to shield them from thepenalty of error. 

Jesus taught us to walk _over_, not _into_ or _with_, the currents ofmatter, or mortal mind. His teachings beard the lions in their dens. Heturned the water into wine, he commanded the winds, he healed thesick, --all in direct opposition to human philosophy and so-called naturalscience. He annulled the laws of matter, showing them to be laws of mortalmind, not of God. He showed the need of changing this mind and its abortivelaws. He demanded a change of consciousness and evidence, and effected thischange through the higher laws of God. The palsied hand moved, despite theboastful sense of physical law and order. Jesus stooped not to humanconsciousness, nor to the evidence of the senses. He heeded not the taunt, "That withered hand looks very real and feels very real;" but he cut offthis vain boasting and destroyed human pride by taking away the materialevidence. If his patient was a theologian of some bigoted sect, aphysician, or a professor of natural philosophy, --according to the rudersort then prevalent, --he never thanked Jesus for restoring his senselesshand; but neither red tape nor indignity hindered the divine process. Jesusrequired neither cycles of time nor thought in order to mature fitness forperfection and its possibilities. He said that the kingdom of heaven ishere, and is included in Mind; that while ye say, There are yet fourmonths, and _then_ cometh the harvest, I say, Look up, not down, for yourfields are already white for the harvest; and gather the harvest by mental, not material processes. The laborers are few in this vineyard ofMind-sowing and reaping; but let them apply to the waiting grain thecurving sickle of Mind's eternal circle, and bind it with bands of Soul. 

The Deep Things of God

Science reverses the evidence of the senses in theology, on the sameprinciple that it does in astronomy. Popular theology makes God tributaryto man, coming at human call; whereas the reverse is true in Science. Menmust approach God reverently, doing their own work in obedience to divinelaw, if they would fulfil the intended harmony of being. 

The principle of music knows nothing of discord. God is harmony's selfhood. His universal laws, His unchangeableness, are not infringed in ethics anymore than in music. To Him there is no moral inharmony; as we shall learn, proportionately as we gain the true understanding of Deity. If God could beconscious of sin, His infinite power would straightway reduce the universeto chaos. 

If God has any real knowledge of sin, sickness, and death, they must beeternal; since He is, in the very fibre of His being, "without beginning ofyears or end of days. " If God knows that which is not permanent, it followsthat He knows something which He must learn to _unknow_, for the benefit ofour race. 

Such a view would bring us upon an outworn theological platform, whichcontains such planks as the divine repentance, and the belief that God mustone day do His work over again, because it was not at first done aright. 

Can it be seriously held, by any thinker, that long after God made theuniverse, --earth, man, animals, plants, the sun, the moon, and "the starsalso, "--He should so gain wisdom and power from past experience that Hecould vastly improve upon His own previous work, --as Burgess, theboatbuilder, remedies in the Volunteer the shortcomings of the Puritan'smodel?

Christians are commanded to _grow in grace_. Was it necessary for God togrow in grace, that He might rectify His spiritual universe?

The Jehovah of limited Hebrew faith might need repentance, because Hiscreated children proved sinful; but the New Testament tells us of "theFather of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. "God is not the shifting vane on the spire, but the corner-stone of livingrock, firmer than everlasting hills. 

As God is Mind, if this Mind is familiar with evil, all cannot be goodtherein. Our infinite model would be taken away. What is in eternal Mindmust be reflected in man, Mind's image. How then could man escape, or hopeto escape, from a knowledge which is everlasting in his creator?

God never said that man would become better by learning to distinguish evilfrom good, --but the contrary, that by this knowledge, by man's firstdisobedience, came "death into the world, and all our woe. "

"Shall mortal man be more just than God?" asks the poet-patriarch. May menrid themselves of an incubus which God never can throw off? Do mortals knowmore than God, that they may declare Him absolutely cognizant of sin?

God created all things, and pronounced them good. Was evil among these goodthings? Man is God's child and image. If God knows evil, so must man, orthe likeness is incomplete, the image marred. 

If man must be destroyed by the knowledge of evil, then his destructioncomes through the very knowledge caught from God, and the creature ispunished for his likeness to his creator. 

God is commonly called the _sinless_, and man the _sinful_; but if thethought of sin could be possible in Deity, would Deity then be sinless?Would God not of necessity take precedence as the infinite sinner, andhuman sin become only an echo of the divine?

Such vagaries are to be found in heathen religious history. There are, orhave been, devotees who worship not the good Deity, who will not harm them, but the bad deity, who seeks to do them mischief, and whom therefore theywish to bribe with prayers into quiescence, as a criminal appeases, with amoney-bag, the venal officer. 

Surely this is no Christian worship! In Christianity man bows to theinfinite perfection which he is bidden to imitate. In Truth, suchterms as _divine sin_ and _infinite sinner_ are unheard-ofcontradictions, --absurdities; but _would_ they be sheer nonsense, if Godhas, or can have, a real knowledge of sin?

Ways Higher than Our Ways

A lie has only one chance of successful deception, --to be accounted true. Evil seeks to fasten all error upon God, and so make the lie seem part ofeternal Truth. 

Emerson says, "Hitch your wagon to a star. " I say, Be allied to the deificpower, and all that is good will aid your journey, as the stars in theircourses fought against Sisera. (Judges v. 20. ) Hourly, in ChristianScience, man thus weds himself with God, or rather he ratifies a unionpredestined from all eternity; but evil ties its wagon-load of offal to thedivine chariots, --or seeks so to do, --that its vileness may be christenedpurity, and its darkness get consolation from borrowed scintillations. 

Jesus distinctly taught the arrogant Pharisees that, from the beginning, their father, the devil, was the would-be murderer of Truth. A rightapprehension of the wonderful utterances of him who "spake as never manspake, " would despoil error of its borrowed plumes, and transform theuniverse into a home of marvellous light, --"a consummation devoutly to bewished. "

Error says God must know evil because He knows all things; but Holy Writdeclares God told our first parents that in the day when they shouldpartake of the fruit of evil, they must surely die. Would it not absurdlyfollow that God must perish, if He knows evil and evil necessarily leadsto extinction? Rather let us think of God as saying, I am infinite good;therefore I know not evil. Dwelling in light, I can see only the brightnessof My own glory. 

Error may say that God can never save man from sin, if He knows and sees itnot; but God says, I am too pure to behold iniquity, and destroy everythingthat is unlike Myself. 

Many fancy that our heavenly Father reasons thus: If pain and sorrow werenot in My mind, I could not remedy them, and wipe the tears from the eyesof My children. Error says you must know grief in order to console it. Truth, God, says you oftenest console others in troubles that you have not. Is not our comforter always from outside and above ourselves?

God says, I show My pity through divine law, not through human. It is Mysympathy with and My knowledge of harmony (not inharmony) which aloneenable Me to rebuke, and eventually destroy, every supposition of discord. 

Error says God must know death in order to strike at its root; but Godsaith, I am ever-conscious Life, and thus I conquer death; for to be everconscious of Life is to be never conscious of death. I am All. A knowledgeof aught beside Myself is impossible. 

If such knowledge of evil were possible to God, it would lower His rank. 

With God, _knowledge_ is necessarily _foreknowledge_; and _foreknowledge_and _foreordination_ must be one, in an infinite Being. What Deity_foreknows_, Deity must _foreordain_; else He is not omnipotent, and, likeourselves, He foresees events which are contrary to His creative will, yetwhich He cannot avert. 

If God knows evil at all, He must have had foreknowledge thereof; and if Heforeknew it, He must virtually have intended it, or ordered itaforetime, --foreordained it; else how could it have come into the world?

But this we cannot believe of God; for if the supreme good could predestineor foreknow evil, there would be sin in Deity, and this would be the end ofinfinite moral unity. "If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!" On the contrary, evil is only a delusivedeception, without any actuality which Truth can know. 

Rectifications

How is a mistake to be rectified? By reversal or revision, --by seeing it inits proper light, and then turning it or turning from it. 

We undo the statements of error by reversing them. 

Through these three statements, or misstatements, evil comes intoauthority:--

 _First:_ The Lord created it. _Second:_ The Lord knows it. _Third:_ I am afraid of it. 

By a reverse process of argument evil must be dethroned:--

 _First:_ God never made evil. _Second:_ He knows it not. _Third:_ We therefore need not fear it. 

Try this process, dear inquirer, and so reach that perfect Love which"casteth out fear, " and then see if this Love does not destroy in you allhate and the sense of evil. You will awake to the perception of God asAll-in-all. You will find yourself losing the knowledge and the operationof sin, proportionably as you realize the divine infinitude and believethat He can see nothing outside of His own focal distance. 

A Colloquy

In Romans (ii. 15) we read the apostle's description of mental processeswherein human thoughts are "the mean while accusing or else excusing oneanother. " If we observe our mental processes, we shall find that we areperpetually arguing with ourselves; yet each mortal is not twopersonalities, but one. 

In like manner good and evil talk to one another; yet they are not two butone, for evil is naught, and good only is reality. 

_Evil. _ God hath said, "Ye shall eat of every tree of the garden. " If youdo not, your intellect will be circumscribed and the evidence of yourpersonal senses be denied. This would antagonize individual consciousnessand existence. 

_Good. _ The Lord is God. With Him is no consciousness of evil, becausethere is nothing beside Him or outside of Him. Individual consciousness inman is inseparable from good. There is no sensible matter, no sense inmatter; but there is a spiritual sense, a sense of Spirit, and this is theonly consciousness belonging to true individuality, or a divine sense ofbeing. 

_Evil. _ Why is this so?

_Good. _ Because man is made after God's eternal likeness, and this likenessconsists in a sense of harmony and immortality, in which no evil canpossibly dwell. You may eat of the fruit of Godlikeness, but as to thefruit of ungodliness, which is opposed to Truth, --ye shall not touch it, lest ye die. 

_Evil. _ But I would taste and know error for myself. 

_Good. _ Thou shalt not admit that error is something to know or be known, to eat or be eaten, to see or be seen, to feel or be felt. To admit theexistence of error would be to admit the truth of a lie. 

_Evil. _ But there is something besides good. God knows that a knowledge ofthis something is essential to happiness and life. A lie is as genuine asTruth, though not so legitimate a child of God. Whatever exists must comefrom God, and be important to our knowledge. Error, even, is His offspring. 

_Good. _ Whatever cometh not from the eternal Spirit, has its origin in thephysical senses and material brains, called _human intellect_ and_will-power_, --_alias_ intelligent matter. 

In Shakespeare's tragedy of King Lear, it was the traitorous and crueltreatment received by old Gloster from his bastard son Edmund which makestrue the lines:

 The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to scourge us. 

His lawful son, Edgar, was to his father ever loyal. Now God has nobastards to turn again and rend their Maker. The divine children are bornof law and order, and Truth knows only such. 

How well the Shakespearean tale agrees with the word of Scripture, inHebrews xii. 7, 8: "If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as withsons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye bewithout chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, andnot sons. "

The doubtful or spurious evidence of the senses is not to beadmitted, --especially when they testify concerning Spirit, whereof they areconfessedly incompetent to speak. 

_Evil. _ But mortal mind and sin really exist!

_Good. _ How can they exist, unless God has created them? And how can Hecreate anything so wholly unlike Himself and foreign to His nature? An evilmaterial mind, so-called, can conceive of God only as like itself, andknowing both evil and good; but a purely good and spiritual consciousnesshas no sense whereby to cognize evil. Mortal mind is the opposite ofimmortal Mind, and sin the opposite of goodness. I am the infinite All. From me proceedeth all Mind, all consciousness, all individuality, allbeing. My Mind is divine good, and cannot drift into evil. To believe inminds many is to depart from the supreme sense of harmony. Your assumptionsinsist that there is more than the one Mind, more than the one God; butverily I say unto you, God is All-in-all; and you can never be outside ofHis oneness. 

_Evil. _ I am a finite consciousness, a material individuality, --a mind inmatter, which is both evil and good. 

_Good. _ All consciousness is Mind; and Mind is God, --an infinite, and not afinite consciousness. This consciousness is reflected in individualconsciousness, or man, whose source is infinite Mind. There is no reallyfinite mind, no finite consciousness. There is no material substance, forSpirit is all that endureth, and hence is the only substance. There is, canbe, no evil mind, because Mind is God. God and His ideas--that is, God andthe universe--constitute all that exists. Man, as God's offspring, must bespiritual, perfect, eternal. 

_Evil. _ I am something separate from good or God. I am substance. My mindis more than matter. In my mortal mind, matter becomes conscious, and isable to see, taste, hear, feel, smell. Whatever matter thus affirms ismainly correct. If you, O good, deny this, then I deny your truthfulness. If you say that matter is unconscious, you stultify my intellect, insult myconscience, and dispute self-evident facts; for nothing can be clearer thanthe testimony of the five senses. 

_Good. _ Spirit is the only substance. Spirit is God, and God is good; hencegood is the only substance, the only Mind. Mind is not, cannot be, inmatter. It sees, hears, feels, tastes, smells as Mind, and not as matter. Matter cannot talk; and hence, whatever it appears to say of itself is alie. This lie, that Mind can be in matter, --claiming to be something besideGod, denying Truth and its demonstration in Christian Science, --this lie Ideclare an illusion. This denial enlarges the human intellect by removingits evidence from sense to Soul, and from finiteness into infinity. Ithonors conscious human individuality by showing God as its source. 

_Evil. _ I am a creator, --but upon a material, not a spiritual basis. I givelife, and I can destroy life. 

_Good. _ Evil is not a creator. God, good, is the only creator. Evil is notconscious or conscientious Mind; it is not individual, not actual. Evil isnot spiritual, and therefore has no groundwork in Life, whose only sourceis Spirit. The elements which belong to the eternal All, --Life, Truth, Love, --evil can never take away. 

_Evil. _ I am intelligent matter; and matter is egoistic, having its owninnate selfhood and the capacity to evolve mind. God is in matter, andmatter reproduces God. From Him come my forms, near or remote. This is myhonor, that God is my author, authority, governor, disposer. I am proud tobe in His outstretched hands, and I shirk all responsibility for myself asevil, and for my varying manifestations. 

_Good. _ You mistake, O evil! God is not your authority and law. Neither isHe the author of the material changes, the _phantasma_, a belief in whichleads to such teaching as we find in the hymn-verse so often sung inchurch:--

 Chance and change are busy ever, Man decays and ages move; But His mercy waneth never, -- God is wisdom, God is love. 

Now if it be true that God's power _never waneth_, how can it be also truethat _chance_ and _change_ are universal factors, --that _man decays_? Manyordinary Christians protest against this stanza of Bowring's, and itssentiment is foreign to Christian Science. If God be _changeless goodness_, as sings another line of this hymn, what place has _chance_ in the divineeconomy? Nay, there is in God naught fantastic. All is real, all isserious. The phantasmagoria is a product of human dreams. 

The Ego

From various friends comes inquiry as to the meaning of a word employed inthe foregoing colloquy. 

There are two English words, often used as if they were synonyms, whichreally have a shade of difference between them. 

An _egotist_ is one who talks much of himself. _Egotism_ implies vanity andself-conceit. 

_Egoism_ is a more philosophical word, signifying a passionate love ofself, which doubts all existence except its own. An _egoist_, therefore, isone uncertain of everything except his own existence. 

Applying these distinctions to evil and God, we shall find that evil is_egotistic_, --boastful, but fleeing like a shadow at daybreak; while God is_egoistic_, knowing only His own all-presence, all-knowledge, all-power. 

Soul

We read in the Hebrew Scriptures, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die. "

What is Soul? Is it a reality within the mortal body? Who can prove that?Anatomy has not descried nor described Soul. It was never touched by thescalpel nor cut with the dissecting-knife. The five physical senses do notcognize it. 

Who, then, dares define Soul as something within man? As well might youdeclare some old castle to be peopled with demons or angels, though never alight or form was discerned therein, and not a spectre had ever been seengoing in or coming out. 

The common hypotheses about souls are even more vague than ordinarymaterial conjectures, and have less basis; because material theories arebuilt on the evidence of the material senses. 

Soul must be God; since we learn Soul only as we learn God, byspiritualization. As the five senses take no cognizance of Soul, so theytake no cognizance of God. Whatever cannot be taken in by mortal mind--byhuman reflection, reason, or belief--must be the unfathomable Mind, which"eye hath not seen, nor ear heard. " Soul stands in this relation to everyhypothesis as to its human character. 

If Soul sins, it is a sinner, and Jewish law condemned the sinner todeath, --as does all criminal law, to a certain extent. 

Spirit never sins, because Spirit is God. Hence, as Spirit, Soul issinless, and is God. Therefore there is, there can be, no spiritual death. 

Transcending the evidence of the material senses, Science declares God tobe the Soul of all being, the only Mind and intelligence in the universe. There is but one God, one Soul, or Mind, and that one is infinite, supplying all that is absolutely immutable and eternal, --Truth, Life, Love. 

Science reveals Soul as that which the senses cannot define from anystandpoint of their own. What the physical senses miscall soul, ChristianScience defines as material sense; and herein lies the discrepancy betweenthe true Science of Soul and that material sense of a soul which that verysense declares can never be seen or measured or weighed or touched byphysicality. 

Often we can elucidate the deep meaning of the Scriptures by reading_sense_ instead of _soul_, as in the Forty-second Psalm: "Why art thou castdown, O my soul [sense]?. . . Hope thou in God [Soul]: for I shall yet praiseHim, who is the health of my countenance, and my God [my Soul, immortality]. "

The Virgin-mother's sense being uplifted to behold Spirit as the soleorigin of man, she exclaimed, "My soul [spiritual sense] doth magnify theLord. "

Human language constantly uses the word _soul_ for _sense_. This it doesunder the delusion that the senses can reverse the spiritual facts ofScience, whereas Science reverses the testimony of the material senses. 

Soul is Life, and being spiritual Life, never sins. Material sense is theso-called material life. Hence this lower sense sins and suffers, accordingto material belief, till divine understanding takes away this belief andrestores Soul, or spiritual Life. "He restoreth my soul, " says David. 

In his first epistle to the Corinthians (xv. 45) Paul writes: "The firstman Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickeningspirit. " The apostle refers to the second Adam as the Messiah, our blessedMaster, whose interpretation of God and His creation--by restoring thespiritual sense of man as immortal instead of mortal--made humanityvictorious over death and the grave. 

When I discovered the power of Spirit to break the cords of matter, througha change in the mortal sense of things, then I discerned the last Adam as aquickening Spirit, and understood the meaning of the declaration of HolyWrit, "The first shall be last, "--the living Soul shall be found aquickening Spirit; or, rather, shall reflect the Life of the divineArbiter. 

There is no Matter

"God is a Spirit" (or, more accurately translated, "God is Spirit"), declares the Scripture (John iv. 24), "and they that worship Him mustworship Him in spirit and in truth. "

If God is Spirit, and God is All, surely there can be no matter; for thedivine All must be Spirit. 

The tendency of Christianity is to spiritualize thought and action. Thedemonstrations of Jesus annulled the claims of matter, and overruled lawsmaterial as emphatically as they annihilated sin. 

According to Christian Science, the _first_ idolatrous claim of sin is, that matter exists; the _second_, that matter is substance; the _third_, that matter has intelligence; and the _fourth_, that matter, being soendowed, produces life and death. 

Hence my conscientious position, in the denial of matter, rests on the factthat matter usurps the authority of God, Spirit; and the nature andcharacter of matter, the antipode of Spirit, include all that denies anddefies Spirit, in quantity or quality. 

This subject can be enlarged. It can be shown, in detail, that evil doesnot obtain in Spirit, God; and that God, or good, is Spirit alone; whereas, evil _does_, according to belief, obtain in matter; and that evil is afalse claim, --false to God, false to Truth and Life. Hence the claim ofmatter usurps the prerogative of God, saying, "I am a creator. God made me, and I make man and the material universe. "

Spirit is the only creator, and man, including the universe, is Hisspiritual concept. By matter is commonly meant mind, --not the highest Mind, but a false form of mind. This so-called mind and matter cannot beseparated in origin and action. 

What is this mind? It is not the Mind of Spirit; for spiritualization ofthought destroys all sense of matter as substance, Life, or intelligence, and enthrones God in the eternal qualities of His being. 

This lower, misnamed mind is a false claim, a suppositional mind, which Iprefer to call _mortal mind_. True Mind is immortal. This mortal minddeclares itself material, in sin, sickness, and death, virtually saying, "Iam the opposite of Spirit, of holiness, harmony, and Life. "

To this declaration Christian Science responds, even as did our Master:"You were a murderer from the beginning. The truth abode not in you. Youare a liar, and the father of it. " Here it appears that a _liar_ was in theneuter gender, --neither masculine nor feminine. Hence it was not man (theimage of God) who lied, but the false claim to personality, which I call_mortal mind_; a claim which Christian Science uncovers, in order todemonstrate the falsity of the claim. 

There are lesser arguments which prove matter to be identical with mortalmind, and this mind a lie. 

The physical senses (matter really having no sense) give the only pretendedtestimony there can be as to the existence of a substance called _matter_. Now these senses, being material, can only testify from their own evidence, and concerning themselves; yet we have it on divine authority: "If I bearwitness of myself, my witness is not true. " (John v. 31. )

In other words: matter testifies of itself, "I am matter;" but unlessmatter is mind, it cannot talk or testify; and if it is mind, it iscertainly not the Mind of Christ, not the Mind that is identical withTruth. 

Brain, thus assuming to testify, is only matter within the skull, and isbelieved to be mind only through error and delusion. Examine that form ofmatter called _brains_, and you find no mind therein. Hence the logicalsequence, that there is in reality neither matter nor mortal mind, but thatthe self-testimony of the physical senses is false. 

Examine these witnesses for error, or falsity, and observe the foundationsof their testimony, and you will find them divided in evidence, mocking theScripture (Matthew xviii. 16), "In the mouth of two or three witnessesevery word may be established. "

_Sight. _ Mortal mind declares that matter sees through the organizations ofmatter, or that mind sees by means of matter. Disorganize the so-calledmaterial structure, and then mortal mind says, "I cannot see;" and declaresthat matter is the master of mind, and that non-intelligence governs. Mortal mind admits that it sees only material images, pictured on the eye'sretina. 

What then is the line of the syllogism? It must be this: That matter is notseen; that mortal mind cannot see without matter; and therefore that thewhole function of material sight is an illusion, a lie. 

Here comes in the summary of the whole matter, wherewith we started: thatGod is All, and God is Spirit; therefore there is nothing but Spirit; andconsequently there is no matter. 

_Touch_. Take another train of reasoning. Mortal mind says that mattercannot feel matter; yet put your finger on a burning coal, and the nerves, material nerves, _do_ feel matter. 

Again I ask: What evidence does mortal mind afford that matter issubstantial, is hot or cold? Take away mortal mind, and matter could notfeel what it calls _substance_. Take away matter, and mortal mind could notcognize its own so-called substance, and this so-called mind would have noidentity. Nothing would remain to be seen or felt. 

What is substance? What is the reality of God and the universe? ImmortalMind is the real substance, --Spirit, Life, Truth, and Love. 

_Taste. _ Mortal mind says, "I taste; and this is sweet, this is sour. " Letmortal mind change, and say that sour is sweet, and so it would be. Ifevery mortal mind believed sweet to be sour, it would be so; for thequalities of matter are but qualities of mortal mind. Change the mind, andthe quality changes. Destroy the belief, and the quality disappears. 

The so-called material senses are found, upon examination, to be mortallymental, instead of material. Reduced to its proper denomination, matter ismortal mind; yet, strictly speaking, there is no mortal mind, for Mind isimmortal, and is not matter, but Spirit. 

_Force. _ What is gravitation? Mortal mind says gravitation is a materialpower, or force. I ask, Which was first, matter or power? That which wasfirst was God, immortal Mind, the Parent of _all_. But God is Truth, andthe forces of Truth are moral and spiritual, not physical. They are not themerciless forces of matter. What then _are_ the so-called forces of matter?They are the phenomena of mortal mind, and matter and mortal mind are one;and this one is a misstatement of Mind, God. 

A molecule, as matter, is not formed by Spirit; for Spirit is _spiritual_consciousness alone. Hence this spiritual consciousness can form nothingunlike itself, Spirit, and Spirit is the only creator. The material atom isan outlined falsity of consciousness, which can gather additional evidenceof consciousness and life only as it adds lie to lie. This process it namesmaterial attraction, and endows with the double capacity of creator andcreation. 

From the beginning this lie was the false witness against the fact thatSpirit is All, beside which there is no other existence. The use of a lieis that it unwittingly confirms Truth, when handled by Christian Science, which reverses false testimony and gains a knowledge of God from oppositefacts, or phenomena. 

This whole subject is met and solved by Christian Science according toScripture. Thus we see that Spirit is Truth and eternal reality; thatmatter is the opposite of Spirit, --referred to in the New Testament as theflesh at war with Spirit; hence, that matter is erroneous, transitory, unreal. 

A further proof of this is the demonstration, according to ChristianScience, that by the reduction and the rejection of the claims of matter(instead of acquiescence therein) man is improved physically, mentally, morally, spiritually. 

To deny the existence or reality of matter, and yet admit the reality ofmoral evil, sin, or to say that the divine Mind is conscious of evil, yetis not conscious of matter, is erroneous. This error stultifies the logicof divine Science, and must interfere with its practical demonstration. 

Is There no Death?

Jesus not only declared himself "the way" and "the truth, " but also "thelife. " God is Life; and as there is but one God, there can be but one Life. Must man die, then, in order to inherit eternal life and enter heaven?

Our Master said, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand. " Then God and heaven, or Life, are present, and death is not the real stepping-stone to Life andhappiness. They are now and here; and a change in human consciousness, fromsin to holiness, would reveal this wonder of being. Because God is everpresent, no boundary of time can separate us from Him and the heaven of Hispresence; and because God is Life, all Life is eternal. 

Is it unchristian to believe there is no death? Not unless it be a sin tobelieve that God is Life and All-in-all. Evil and disease do not testify ofLife and God. 

Human beings are physically mortal, but spiritually immortal. The evilaccompanying physical personality is illusive and mortal; but the goodattendant upon spiritual individuality is immortal. Existing here and now, this unseen individuality is real and eternal. The so-called materialsenses, and the mortal mind which is misnamed _man_, take no cognizance ofspiritual individuality, which manifests immortality, whose Principle isGod. 

To God alone belong the indisputable realities of being. Death is acontradiction of Life, or God; therefore it is not in accordance with Hislaw, but antagonistic thereto. 

Death, then, is error, opposed to Truth, --even the unreality of mortalmind, not the reality of that Mind which is Life. Error has no life, and isvirtually without existence. Life is real; and all is real which proceedsfrom Life and is inseparable from it. 

It is unchristian to believe in the transition called _material death_, since matter has no life, and such misbelief must enthrone another power, an imaginary life, above the living and true God. A material sense of liferobs God, by declaring that not He alone is Life, but that something elsealso is life, --thus affirming the existence and rulership of more gods thanone. This idolatrous and false sense of life is all that dies, or appearsto die. 

The opposite understanding of God brings to light Life and immortality. Death has no quality of Life; and no divine fiat commands us to believe inaught which is unlike God, or to deny that He is Life eternal. 

Life as God, moral and spiritual good, is not seen in the mineral, vegetable, or animal kingdoms. Hence the inevitable conclusion that Life isnot in these kingdoms, and that the popular views to this effect are not upto the Christian standard of Life, or equal to the reality of being, whosePrinciple is God. 

When "the Word" is "made flesh" among mortals, the Truth of Life isrendered practical on the body. Eternal Life is partially understood; andsickness, sin, and death yield to holiness, health, and Life, --that is, toGod. The lust of the flesh and the pride of physical life must be quenchedin the divine essence, --that omnipotent Love which annihilates hate, thatLife which knows no death. 

"Who hath believed our report?" Who understands these sayings? He to whomthe arm of the Lord is revealed. He loves them from whom divine Scienceremoves human weakness by divine strength, and who unveil the Messiah, whose name is Wonderful. 

Man has no underived power. That selfhood is false which opposes itself toGod, claims another father, and denies spiritual sonship; but as many asreceive the knowledge of God in Science must reflect, in some degree, thepower of Him who gave and giveth man dominion over all the earth. 

As soldiers of the cross we must be brave, and let Science declare theimmortal status of man, and deny the evidence of the material senses, whichtestify that man dies. 

As the image of God, or Life, man forever reflects and embodies Life, notdeath. The material senses testify falsely. They presuppose that God isgood and that man is evil, that Deity is deathless, but that man dies, losing the divine likeness. 

Science and material sense conflict at all points, from the revolution ofthe earth to the fall of a sparrow. It is mortality only that dies. 

To say that you and I, as mortals, will not enter this dark shadow ofmaterial sense, called _death_, is to assert what we have not proved; butman in Science never dies. Material sense, or the belief of life in matter, must perish, in order to prove man deathless. 

As Truth supersedes error, and bears the fruits of Love, this understandingof Truth subordinates the belief in death, and demonstrates Life asimperative in the divine order of being. 

Jesus declares that they who believe his sayings will never die; thereforemortals can no more receive everlasting life by believing in death, thanthey can become perfect by believing in imperfection and livingimperfectly. 

Life is God, and God is good. Hence Life abides in man, if man abides ingood, if he lives in God, who holds Life by a spiritual and not by amaterial sense of being. 

A sense of death is not requisite to a proper or true sense of Life, butbeclouds it. Death can never alarm or even appear to him who fullyunderstands Life. The death-penalty comes through our ignorance ofLife, --of that which is without beginning and without end, --and is thepunishment of this ignorance. 

Holding a material sense of Life, and lacking the spiritual sense of it, mortals die, in belief, and regard all things as temporal. A sense materialapprehends nothing strictly belonging to the nature and office of Life. Itconceives and beholds nothing but mortality, and has but a feeble conceptof immortality. 

In order to reach the true knowledge and consciousness of Life, we mustlearn it of good. Of evil we can never learn it, because sin shuts out thereal sense of Life, and brings in an unreal sense of suffering and death. 

Knowledge of evil, or belief in it, involves a loss of the true sense ofgood, God; and to know death, or to believe in it, involves a temporaryloss of God, the infinite and only Life. 

Resurrection from the dead (that is, from the belief in death) must come toall sooner or later; and they who have part in this resurrection are theyupon whom the second death has no power. 

The sweet and sacred sense of the permanence of man's unity with his Makercan illumine our present being with a continual presence and power of good, opening wide the portal from death into Life; and when this Life shallappear "we shall be like Him, " and we shall go to the Father, not throughdeath, but through Life; not through error, but through Truth. 

All Life is Spirit, and Spirit can never dwell in its antagonist, matter. Life, therefore, is deathless, because God cannot be the opposite ofHimself. In Christian Science there is no matter; hence matter neitherlives nor dies. To the senses, matter appears to both live and die, andthese phenomena appear to go on _ad infinitum_; but such a theory impliesperpetual disagreement with Spirit. 

Life, God, being everywhere, it must follow that death can be nowhere;because there is no place left for it. 

Soul, Spirit, is deathless. Matter, sin, and death are not the outcome ofSpirit, holiness, and Life. What then are matter, sin, and death? They canbe nothing except the results of material consciousness; but materialconsciousness can have no real existence, because it is not a living--thatis to say, a divine and intelligent--reality. 

That man must be vicious before he can be virtuous, dying before he can bedeathless, material before he can be spiritual, is an error of the senses;for the very opposite of this error is the genuine Science of being. 

Man, in Science, is as perfect and immortal now, as when "the morning starssang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. "

With Christ, Life was not merely a sense of existence, but a sense of mightand ability to subdue material conditions. No wonder "people wereastonished at his doctrine; for he taught them as one having authority, andnot as the scribes. "

As defined by Jesus, Life had no beginning; nor was it the result oforganization, or of an infusion of power into matter. To him, Life wasSpirit. 

Truth, defiant of error or matter, is Science, dispelling a false sense andleading man into the true sense of selfhood and Godhood; wherein the mortaldoes not develop the immortal, nor the material the spiritual, but whereintrue manhood and womanhood go forth in the radiance of eternal being andits perfections, unchanged and unchangeable. 

This generation seems too material for any strong demonstration over death, and hence cannot bring out the infinite reality of Life, --namely, thatthere is no death, but only Life. The present mortal sense of being is toofinite for anchorage in infinite good, God, because mortals now believe inthe possibility that Life can be evil. 

The achievement of this ultimatum of Science, complete triumph over death, requires time and immense spiritual growth. 

I have by no means spoken of myself, I _cannot_ speak of myself as"sufficient for these things. " I insist only upon the fact, as it exists indivine Science, that man dies not, and on the words of the Master insupport of this verity, --words which can never "pass away till all befulfilled. "

Because of these profound reasons I urge Christians to have more faith inliving than in dying. I exhort them to accept Christ's promise, and unitethe influence of their own thoughts with the power of his teachings, in theScience of being. This will interpret the divine power to human capacity, and enable us to _apprehend_, or lay hold upon, "that for which, " as Paulsays in the third chapter of Philippians, we are also "apprehended of [orgrasped by] Christ Jesus, "--the ever-present Life which knows no death, theomnipresent Spirit which knows no matter. 

Personal Statements

Many misrepresentations are made concerning my doctrines, some of which areas unkind and unjust as they are untrue; but I can only repeat the Master'swords: "They know not what they do. "

The foundations of these assertions, like the structure raised thereupon, are vain shadows, repeating--if the popular couplet may be so paraphrased--

 The old, old story, Of _Satan_ and his _lie_. 

In the days of Eden, humanity was misled by a false personality, --a talkingsnake, --according to Biblical history. This pretender taught the oppositeof Truth. This abortive ego, this fable of error, is laid bare in ChristianScience. 

Human theories call, or miscall, this evil a child of God. Philosophy wouldmultiply and subdivide personality into everything that exists, whetherexpressive or not expressive of the Mind which is God. Human wisdom says ofevil, "The Lord knows it!" thus carrying out the serpent's assurance: "Inthe day ye eat thereof [when you, lie, get the floor], then your eyes shallbe opened [you shall be conscious matter], and ye shall be as gods, knowinggood and evil [you shall believe a lie, and this lie shall seem truth]. "

Bruise the head of this serpent, as Truth and "the woman" are doing inChristian Science, and it stings your heel, rears its crest proudly, andgoes on saying, "Am I not myself? Am I not mind and matter, person andthing?" We should answer: "Yes! you are indeed yourself, and need most ofall to be rid of this self, for it is very far from God's likeness. "

The egotist must come down and learn, in humility, that God never madeevil. An evil ego, and his assumed power, are falsities. These falsitiesneed a denial. The falsity is the teaching that matter can be conscious;and conscious matter implies pantheism. This pantheism I unveil. I try toshow its all-pervading presence in certain forms of theology andphilosophy, where it becomes error's affirmative to Truth's negative. Anatomy and physiology make mind-matter a habitant of the cerebellum, whence it telegraphs and telephones over its own body, and goes forth intoan imaginary sphere of its own creation and limitation, until it finallydies in order to better itself. But Truth never dies, and death is not thegoal which Truth seeks. 

The evil ego has but the visionary substance of matter. It lacks thesubstance of Spirit, --Mind, Life, Soul. Mortal mind is self-creative andself-sustained, until it becomes non-existent. It has no origin orexistence in Spirit, immortal Mind, or good. Matter is not truly conscious;and mortal error, called _mind_, is not Godlike. These are the shadowy andfalse, which neither think nor speak. 

All Truth is from inspiration and revelation, --from Spirit, not from flesh. 

We do not see much of the real man here, for he is God's man; while ours isman's man. 

I do not deny, I maintain, the individuality and reality of man; but I doso on a divine Principle, not based on a human conception and birth. Thescientific man and his Maker are here; and you would be none other thanthis man, if you would subordinate the fleshly perceptions to the spiritualsense and source of being. 

Jesus said, "I and my Father are one. " He taught no selfhood as existent inmatter. In his identity there is no evil. Individuality and Life were realto him only as spiritual and good, not as material or evil. This incensedthe rabbins against Jesus, because it was an indignity to theirpersonality; and this personality they regarded as both good and evil, asis still claimed by the worldly-wise. To them evil was even more the egothan was the good. Sin, sickness, and death were evil's concomitants. Thisevil ego they believed must extend throughout the universe, as beingequally identical and self-conscious with God. This ego was in theearthquake, thunderbolt, and tempest. 

The Pharisees fought Jesus on this issue. It furnished the battle-ground ofthe past, as it does of the present. The fight was an effort to enthroneevil. Jesus assumed the burden of disproof by destroying sin, sickness, and death, to sight and sense. 

Nowhere in Scripture is evil connected with good, the being of God, andwith every passing hour it is losing its false claim to existence orconsciousness. All that can exist is God and His idea. 

Credo

It is fair to ask of every one a reason for the faith within. Though it bebut to repeat my twice-told tale, --nay, the tale already told a hundredtimes, --yet ask, and I will answer. 

_Do you believe in God?_

I believe more in Him than do most Christians, for I have no faith in anyother thing or being. He sustains my individuality. Nay, more--He _is_ myindividuality and my Life. Because He lives, I live. He heals all my ills, destroys my iniquities, deprives death of its sting, and robs the grave ofits victory. 

To me God is All. He is best understood as Supreme Being, as infinite andconscious Life, as the affectionate Father and Mother of all He creates;but this divine Parent no more enters into His creation than the humanfather enters into his child. His creation is not the Ego, but thereflection of the Ego. The Ego is God Himself, the infinite Soul. 

I believe that of which I am conscious through the understanding, howeverfaintly able to demonstrate Truth and Love. 

_Do you believe in man?_

I believe in the individual man, for I understand that man is as definiteand eternal as God, and that man is coexistent with God, as being theeternally divine idea. This is demonstrable by the simple appeal to humanconsciousness. 

But I believe less in the sinner, wrongly named _man_. The more Iunderstand true humanhood, the more I see it to be sinless, --as ignorant ofsin as is the perfect Maker. 

To me the reality and substance of being are _good_, and nothing else. Through the eternal reality of existence I reach, in thought, a glorifiedconsciousness of the only living God and the genuine man. So long as I holdevil in consciousness, I cannot be wholly good. 

You cannot simultaneously serve the mammon of materiality and the God ofspirituality. There are not two realities of being, two opposite states ofexistence. One should appear real to us, and the other unreal, or we losethe Science of being. Standing in no basic Truth, we make "the worse appearthe better reason, " and the unreal masquerades as the real, in our thought. 

Evil is without Principle. Being destitute of Principle, it is devoid ofScience. Hence it is undemonstrable, without proof. This gives me a clearerright to call evil a negation, than to affirm it to be something which Godsees and knows, but which He straightway commands mortals to shun orrelinquish, lest it destroy them. This notion of the destructibility ofMind implies the possibility of its defilement; but how can infinite Mindbe defiled?

_Do you believe in matter_?

I believe in matter only as I believe in evil, that it is something to bedenied and destroyed to human consciousness, and is unknown to the Divine. We should watch and pray that we enter not into the temptation ofpantheistic belief in matter as sensible mind. We should subjugate it asJesus did, by a dominant understanding of Spirit. 

At best, matter is only a phenomenon of mortal mind, of which evil is thehighest degree; but really there is no such thing as _mortal mind_, --thoughwe are compelled to use the phrase in the endeavor to express theunderlying thought. 

In reality there are no material states or stages of consciousness, andmatter has neither Mind nor sensation. Like evil, it is destitute of Mind, for Mind is God. 

The less consciousness of evil or matter mortals have, the easier it is forthem to evade sin, sickness, and death, --which are but states of falsebelief, --and awake from the troubled dream, a consciousness which iswithout Mind or Maker. 

Matter and evil cannot be conscious, and consciousness should not be evil. Adopt this rule of Science, and you will discover the material origin, growth, maturity, and death of sinners, as the history of man, disappears, and the everlasting facts of being appear, wherein man is the reflectionof immutable good. 

Reasoning from false premises, --that Life is material, that immortal Soulis sinful, and hence that sin is eternal, --the reality of being is neitherseen, felt, heard, nor understood. Human philosophy and human reason cannever make one hair white or black, except in belief; whereas thedemonstration of God, as in Christian Science, is gained through Christ asperfect manhood. 

In pantheism the world is bereft of its God, whose place is ill supplied bythe pretentious usurpation, by matter, of the heavenly sovereignty. 

_What say you of woman?_

Man is the generic term for all humanity. Woman is the highest species ofman, and this word is the generic term for all women; but not one of allthese individualities is an Eve or an Adam. They have none of them losttheir harmonious state, in the economy of God's wisdom and government. 

The Ego is divine consciousness, eternally radiating throughout all spacein the idea of God, good, and not of His opposite, evil. The Ego isrevealed as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; but the full Truth is found onlyin divine Science, where we see God as Life, Truth, and Love. In thescientific relation of man to God, man is reflected not as human soul, butas the divine ideal, whose Soul is not in body, but is God, --the divinePrinciple of man. Hence Soul is sinless and immortal, in contradistinctionto the supposition that there can be sinful souls or immortal sinners. 

This Science of God and man is the Holy Ghost, which reveals and sustainsthe unbroken and eternal harmony of both God and the universe. It is thekingdom of heaven, the ever-present reign of harmony, already with us. Hence the need that human consciousness should become divine, in thecoincidence of God and man, in contradistinction to the false consciousnessof both good and evil, God and devil, --of man separated from his Maker. This is the precious redemption of soul, as mortal sense, through Christ'simmortal sense of Truth, which presents Truth's spiritual idea, _man_ and_woman_. 

_What say you of evil?_

God is not the so-called ego of evil; for evil, as a supposition, is thefather of itself, --of the material world, the flesh, and the devil. Fromthis falsehood arise the self-destroying elements of this world, its unkindforces, its tempests, lightnings, earthquakes, poisons, rabid beasts, fatalreptiles, and mortals. 

Why are earth and mortals so elaborate in beauty, color, and form, if Godhas no part in them? By the law of opposites. The most beautiful blossom isoften poisonous, and the most beautiful mansion is sometimes the home ofvice. The senses, not God, Soul, form the condition of beautiful evil, andthe supposed modes of self-conscious matter, which make a beautiful lie. Now a lie takes its pattern from Truth, by reversing Truth. So evil and allits forms are inverted good. God never made them; but the lie must say Hemade them, or it would not be evil. Being a lie, it would be truthful tocall itself a lie; and by calling the knowledge of evil good, and greatlyto be desired, it constitutes the lie an evil. 

The reality and individuality of man are good and God-made, and they arehere to be seen and demonstrated; it is only the evil belief that rendersthem obscure. 

Matter and evil are anti-Christian, the antipodes of Science. To say thatMind is material, or that evil is Mind, is a misapprehension of being, --amistake which will die of its own delusion; for being self-contradictory, it is also self-destructive. The harmony of man's being is not built onsuch false foundations, which are no more logical, philosophical, orscientific than would be the assertion that the rule of addition is therule of subtraction, and that sums done under both rules would have onequotient. 

Man's individuality is not a mortal mind or sinner; or else he has lost histrue individuality as a perfect child of God. Man's Father is not a mortalmind and a sinner; or else the immortal and unerring Mind, God, is not hisFather; but God _is_ man's origin and loving Father, hence that saying ofJesus, "Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. "

The bright gold of Truth is dimmed by the doctrine of mind in matter. 

To say there _is_ a false claim, called _sickness_, is to admit all thereis of sickness; for it is nothing but a false claim. To be healed, one mustlose sight of a false claim. If the claim be present to the thought, thendisease becomes as tangible as any reality. To regard sickness as a falseclaim, is to abate the fear of it; but this does not destroy the so-calledfact of the _claim_. In order to be whole, we must be insensible to everyclaim of error. 

As with sickness, so is it with sin. To admit that sin has any claimwhatever, just or unjust, is to admit a dangerous fact. Hence the fact mustbe denied; for if sin's claim be allowed in any degree, then sin destroysthe _at-one-ment_, or oneness with God, --a unity which sin recognizes asits most potent and deadly enemy. 

If God knows sin, even as a false claimant, then acquaintance with thatclaimant becomes legitimate to mortals, and this knowledge would not beforbidden; but God forbade man to know evil at the very beginning, whenSatan held it up before man as something desirable and a distinct additionto human wisdom, because the knowledge of evil would make man a god, --arepresentation that God both knew and admitted the dignity of evil. 

Which is right, --God, who condemned the knowledge of sin and disowned itsacquaintance, or the serpent, who pushed that claim with the glitteringaudacity of diabolical and sinuous logic?

Suffering from Others' Thoughts

Jesus accepted the one fact whereby alone the rule of Life can bedemonstrated, --namely, that there is no death. 

In his real self he bore no infirmities. Though "a man of sorrows, andacquainted with grief, " as Isaiah says of him, he bore not _his_ sins, but_ours_, "in his own body on the tree. " "He was bruised for _our_iniquities; . . . And with his stripes we are healed. "

He was the Way-shower; and Christian Scientists who would demonstrate "theway" must keep close to his path, that they may win the prize. "The way, "in the flesh, is the suffering which leads out of the flesh. "The way, " inSpirit, is "the way" of Life, Truth, and Love, redeeming us from the falsesense of the flesh and the wounds it bears. This threefold Messiah revealsthe self-destroying ways of error and the life-giving way of Truth. 

Job's faith and hope gained him the assurance that the so-called sufferingsof the flesh are unreal. We shall learn how false are the pleasures andpains of material sense, and behold the truth of being, as expressed in hisconviction, "Yet in my flesh shall I see God;" that is, Now and here shallI behold God, divine Love. 

The chaos of mortal mind is made the stepping-stone to the cosmos ofimmortal Mind. 

If Jesus suffered, as the Scriptures declare, it must have been from thementality of others; since all suffering comes from mind, not from matter, and there could be no sin or suffering in the Mind which is God. Not hisown sins, but the sins of the world, "crucified the Lord of glory, " and"put him to an open shame. "

Holding a quickened sense of false environment, and suffering frommentality in opposition to Truth, are significant of that state of mindwhich the actual understanding of Christian Science first eliminates andthen destroys. 

In the divine order of Science every follower of Christ shares his cup ofsorrows. He also suffereth in the flesh, and from the mentality whichopposes the law of Spirit; but the divine law is supreme, for it freeth himfrom the law of sin and death. 

Prophets and apostles suffered from the thoughts of others. Their consciousbeing was not fully exempt from physicality and the sense of sin. 

Until he awakes from his delusion, he suffers least from sin who is ahardened sinner. The hypocrite's affections must first be made to fret intheir chains; and the pangs of hell must lay hold of him ere he can changefrom flesh to Spirit, become acquainted with that Love which is withoutdissimulation and endureth all things. Such mental conditions asingratitude, lust, malice, hate, constitute the miasma of earth. Moreobnoxious than Chinese stenchpots are these dispositions which offend thespiritual sense. 

Anatomically considered, the design of the material senses is to warnmortals of the approach of danger by the pain they feel and occasion; butas this sense disappears it foresees the impending doom and foretells thepain. Man's refuge is in spirituality, "under the shadow of the Almighty. "

The cross is the central emblem of human history. Without it there isneither temptation nor glory. When Jesus turned and said, "Who hath touchedme?" he must have felt the influence of the woman's thought; for it iswritten that he felt that "virtue had gone out of him. " His pureconsciousness was discriminating, and rendered this infallible verdict; buthe neither held her error by affinity nor by infirmity, for it was detectedand dismissed. 

This gospel of suffering brought life and bliss. This is earth's Bethel instone, --its pillow, supporting the ladder which reaches heaven. 

Suffering was the confirmation of Paul's faith. Through "a thorn in theflesh" he learned that spiritual grace was sufficient for him. 

Peter rejoiced that he was found worthy to suffer for Christ; because tosuffer with him is to reign with him. 

Sorrow is the harbinger of joy. Mortal throes of anguish forward the birthof immortal being; but divine Science wipes away all tears. 

The only conscious existence in the flesh is error of some sort, --sin, pain, death, --a false sense of life and happiness. Mortals, if at ease inso-called existence, are in their native element of error, and must become_dis-eased_, dis-quieted, before error is annihilated. 

Jesus walked with bleeding feet the thorny earth-road, treading "thewinepress alone. " His persecutors said mockingly, "Save thyself, and comedown from the cross. " This was the very thing he _was_ doing, coming downfrom the cross, saving himself after the manner that he had taught, by thelaw of Spirit's supremacy; and this was done through what is humanly called_agony_. 

Even the ice-bound hypocrite melts in fervent heat, before he apprehendsChrist as "the way. " The Master's sublime triumph over all mortal mentalitywas immortality's goal. He was too wise not to be willing to test the fullcompass of human woe, being "in all points tempted like as we are, yetwithout sin. "

Thus the absolute unreality of sin, sickness, and death was revealed, --arevelation that beams on mortal sense as the midnight sun shines over thePolar Sea. 

The Saviour's Mission

If there is no reality in evil, why did the Messiah come to the world, andfrom what evils was it his purpose to save humankind? How, indeed, is he aSaviour, if the evils from which he saves are nonentities?

Jesus came to earth; but the Christ (that is, the divine idea of the divinePrinciple which made heaven and earth) was never absent from the earth andheaven; hence the phraseology of Jesus, who spoke of the Christ as one whocame down from heaven, yet as "the Son of man _which is in heaven_. " (Johniii. 13. ) By this we understand Christ to be the divine idea brought to theflesh in the son of Mary. 

Salvation is as eternal as God. To mortal thought Jesus appeared as achild, and grew to manhood, to suffer before Pilate and on Calvary, becausehe could reach and teach mankind only through this conformity to mortalconditions; but Soul never saw the Saviour come and go, because the divineidea is always present. 

Jesus came to rescue men from these very illusions to which he seemed toconform: from the illusion which calls sin real, and man a sinner, needinga Saviour; the illusion which calls sickness real, and man an invalid, needing a physician; the illusion that death is as real as Life. From suchthoughts--mortal inventions, one and all--Christ Jesus came to save men, through ever-present and eternal good. 

Mortal man is a kingdom divided against itself. With the same breath hearticulates truth and error. We say that God is All, and there is nonebeside Him, and then talk of sin and sinners as real. We call Godomnipotent and omnipresent, and then conjure up, from the dark abyss ofnothingness, a powerful presence named _evil_. We say that harmony is real, and inharmony is its opposite, and therefore unreal; yet we descant uponsickness, sin, and death as realities. 

With the tongue "bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, who are made after the similitude [human concept] of God. Out of the samemouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought notso to be. " (James iii. 9, 10. ) Mortals are free moral agents, to choosewhom they would serve. If God, then let them serve Him, and He will be untothem All-in-all. 

If God is ever present, He is neither absent from Himself nor from theuniverse. Without Him, the universe would disappear, and space, substance, and immortality be lost. St. Paul says, "And if Christ be not raised, yourfaith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. " (1 Corinthians xv. 17. ) Christcannot come to mortal and material sense, which sees not God. This falsesense of substance must yield to His eternal presence, and so dissolve. Rising above the false, to the true evidence of Life, is the resurrectionthat takes hold of eternal Truth. Coming and going belong to mortalconsciousness. God is "the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever. "

To material sense, Jesus first appeared as a helpless human babe; but toimmortal and spiritual vision he was one with the Father, even the eternalidea of God, that was--and is--neither young nor old, neither dead norrisen. The mutations of mortal sense are the evening and the morning ofhuman thought, --the twilight and dawn of earthly vision, which precedeththe nightless radiance of divine Life. Human perception, advancing towardthe apprehension of its nothingness, halts, retreats, and again goesforward; but the divine Principle and Spirit and spiritual man areunchangeable, --neither advancing, retreating, nor halting. 

Our highest sense of infinite good in this mortal sphere is but the signand symbol, not the substance of good. Only faith and a feebleunderstanding make the earthly acme of human sense. "The life which I nowlive in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God. " (Galatians ii. 20. )

Christian Science is both demonstration and fruition, but how attenuatedare our demonstration and realization of this Science! Truth, in divineScience, is the stepping-stone to the understanding of God; but the brokenand contrite heart soonest discerns this truth, even as the helpless sickare soonest healed by it. Invalids say, "I have recovered from sickness;"when the fact really remains, in divine Science, that they never were sick. 

The Christian saith, "Christ (God) died for me, and came to save me;" yetGod dies not, and is the ever-presence that neither comes nor goes, and manis forever His image and likeness. "The things which are seen are temporal;but the things which are not seen are eternal. " (2 Corinthians iv. 18. )This is the mystery of godliness--that God, good, is never absent, andthere is none beside good. Mortals can understand this only as they reachthe Life of good, and learn that there is no Life in evil. Then shall itappear that the true ideal of omnipotent and ever-present good is an idealwherein and wherefor there is no evil. Sin exists only as a sense, and notas Soul. Destroy this sense of sin, and sin disappears. Sickness, sin, ordeath is a false sense of Life and good. Destroy this trinity of error, andyou find Truth. 

In Science, Christ never died. In material sense Jesus died, and lived. Thefleshly Jesus seemed to die, though he did not. The Truth or Life in divineScience--undisturbed by human error, sin, and death--saith forever, "I amthe living God, and man is My idea, never in matter, nor resurrected fromit. " "Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen. "(Luke xxiv. 5, 6. ) Mortal sense, confining itself to matter, is all thatcan be buried or resurrected. 

Mary had risen to discern faintly God's ever-presence, and that of Hisidea, man; but her mortal sense, reversing Science and spiritualunderstanding, interpreted this appearing as a risen Christ. The IAM was neither buried nor resurrected. The Way, the Truth, and theLife were never absent for a moment. This trinity of Love lives and reignsforever. Its kingdom, not apparent to material sense, never disappeared tospiritual sense, but remained forever in the Science of being. Theso-called appearing, disappearing, and reappearing of ever-presence, inwhom is no variableness or shadow of turning, is the false human sense ofthat light which shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth itnot. 

Summary

All that _is_, God created. If sin has any pretense of existence, God isresponsible therefor; but there is no reality in sin, for God can no morebehold it, or acknowledge it, than the sun can coexist with darkness. 

To build the individual spiritual sense, conscious of only health, holiness, and heaven, on the foundations of an eternal Mind which isconscious of sickness, sin, and death, is a moral impossibility; for "otherfoundation can no man lay than that is laid. " (1 Corinthians iii. 11. ) Thenearer we approximate to such a Mind, even if it were (or could be) God, the more real those mind-pictures would become to us; until the hope ofever eluding their dread presence must yield to despair, and the hauntingsense of evil forever accompany our being. 

Mortals may climb the smooth glaciers, leap the dark fissures, scale thetreacherous ice, and stand on the summit of Mont Blanc; but they can neverturn back what Deity knoweth, nor escape from identification with whatdwelleth in the eternal Mind.