Unity of good and unreality of evil

Qass
Book

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Xi

SCIENCE AND HEALTH

%
WITH KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES

BY MARY BAKER G. EDDY

600 pages Thirty-second Edition Carefully Revised

The standard work on Mind-Healing, including the theory
and practice of Christian Science. The sick are healed by
simply reading this book.

Price $J.oo. By mail 18 cents extra

PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR

385 Commonwealth Avenue

Boston Mass.

UNITY OF GOOD

AND

UNREALITY OF EVIL

BY

MARY BAKER G. EDDY

President of Massachusetts Metaphysicial College

FEB 24 1888 s

/

Or

BOSTON
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR

571 COLUMBUS AVENUE
1888

<K&

^ ^^

COPYRIGHTED

BY MARY BAKER G. EDDY

1887

CONTENTS

LAUTION IN THE lRUTII . .

I

Does God know or behold sin, sickness, and death ?

I

Seedtime and Harvest

IO

Is anything real of which the physical senses

are

cognizant? ......

IO

The Deep Things of God ....

16

Ways Higher than Our Ways

20

Rectifications

24

A Colloquy

26

The Ego

34

Living Soul

35

There is no Matter?

39

Sight ........

42

Touch .......

43

Taste .......

43

Force . . .

44

Is there no Death?

47

Personal Statements

56

IV

Contents.

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

60
60
61
62
64
65
69

74
80

Caution in tlje (Erntl).

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

Let us then reason together on this important,
subject, whose statement in Christian 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 appre-
hended and demonstrated by mortals, that I counsel
my students to defer this infinite inquiry, in their
discussions of Christian Science. In fact, they had
better leave the subject untouched, until they draw
nearer to the divine character, and are practically

2 Caution in the Truth.

able to testify, by their lives, that as they come
closer to the true understanding of God, they lose
all sense of error.

The Scriptures declare that God is too pure to
behold iniquity (Habakkuk i. 13) ; but they also
declare that God pitieth them who fear Him ; that
there is no place where His voice is not heard ;
that He is " a very present help in time of trouble."

The sinner has no refuge from sin, except in God,
who is his salvation. We must, however, realize
God's presence, power, and love, in order to be
saved from sin. This realization takes away man's
fondness for sin and his pleasure in it; and, lastly,
it removes the pain which accrues to him from it.
Then follows this as the finale in Science : The
sinner loses his sense 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 infinite penetration 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 that spiritual sense of harmony
which contains neither discord nor disease.

Unity of Good. 3

According to this same rule, in Divine Science,
the dying — if they die in the Lord — awake from a
sense of death to a sense of Life in Christ, with
a knowledge of Truth and Love beyond what they
possessed before ; because their lives have grown so
far toward the stature of manhood in Christ Jesus,
that they are ready for a spiritual transfiguration,
through their affections and understanding.

Those who reach this transition, called death,
without having rightly improved the lessons of this
primary school of mortal existence, — and still
believe in matter's reality, pleasure, and pain, — are
not ready to understand Immortality. Hence they
awake only to another sphere of experience, and
must pass through another probationary state before
it can be truly said of them: : ' Blessed are the dead
who 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's commands,
and have washed their robes white through the
sufferings of the flesh and the triumphs of Spirit.
Thus they have reached the goal in Divine Science,
by knowing Him in whom they have believed.

4 Caution in the Truth.

This knowledge is not the forbidden fruit of sin,
sickness, and death, but it is the fruit which grows
on the Tree of Life. This is the understanding of
God, whereby man is found in the image and like-
ness of Good, not of evil, of Health, not of sickness,-
of Life, not of death.

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

If He is All, He can have no consciousness of
anything unlike Himself ; because, if He is omni-
present, 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 of sin, 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, and there is no error. This law
of Truth destroys every phase of error. To gain a
temporary consciousness of God's law is to feel, in

Caution in the Truth. r

a certain finite human sense, that Gqp comes to us
and pities us; but the attainment of the under-
standing of His presence, through the Science of
God, destroys our sense of imperfection, or of His
absence, through a diviner sense that God is all
true consciousness; and this convinces us that, as
we get still nearer Him, we must forever lose our
own consciousness of error.

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

The Gospel declares (John xvii. 3) that Life
Eternal consists in the knowledge of the only true
God, and of Jesus Christ whom He has sent.
Surely from such an understanding of Science, such
knowing, the vision of sin is wholly excluded.

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

6 Unity of Good.

Rather will they rejoice in the small understanding
they have already gained of the wholeness of Deity,
and work gradually and gently up toward the perfect
thought divine. This meekness will increase their
apprehension of God. because their mental struggles
and pride of opinion will proportionately diminish.

Everyone should be encouraged not to accept any
personal opinion on so great a matter, but to seek
the divinity of this question of Truth, by following
upward individual convictions, undisturbed by the
frightened sense of any need of attempting to solve
every Life-problem in a day.

"Great is the mystery of Godliness," says Paul;
and mystery involves the unknown. No stubborn
purpose to force conclusions on this subject will
unfold in us a higher sense of Deity; neither
will it promote the cause of Truth, or enlighten the
individual thought.

Let us respect the rights of conscience and the
liberty of the Sons of God, so letting our "mod-
eration be known to all men." Let no enmity, no
untempered controversy, spring up between Christian
Science students, and Christians who wholly or par-
tially differ from them as to the nature of sin, and

Caution in the Truth. 7

the marvellous unity of man with God, shadowed
forth in Scientific thought. Rather let the stately
goings of this wonderful part of Truth be left to the
supernal guidance.

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

Sooner or later the whole human race will learn
that, in proportion as the spotless selfhood of God
is understood, human nature will be renovated,
and man will receive a higher selfhood, derived
from God, and the redemption of mortals from sin,
sickness, and death be established on everlasting
foundations.

The Science of physical harmony, as now pre-
sented to the people in Divine Light, is radical
enough to promote as forcible collisions of thought
as the age has strength to bear. Until the heavenly
law of health, according to Christian Science, is
firmly grounded, even the thinkers are not pre-
pared to answer intelligently leading questions about
God and sin, and the world is far from ready to
assimilate such a grand and all-absorbing verity

8 Unity of Good.

concerning the Divine Nature and Character, as is
embraced in the theory 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 the problems of Euclid.

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

Nevertheless, though I thus speak, and from my
heart of hearts, it is due both to Christian Science
and myself to make also the following statement:
When I have most clearly seen and most sensibly
felt that the Infinite recognizes no sin, this has not
separated me from God, but has so bound me to

Caution in the Truth. 9

Him as to enable me instantaneously to heal a can-
cer, which had eaten its way to the jugular vein.

In the same spiritual condition I have been able
to replace dislocated joints, and raise the dying to
speedy health. People are now living who 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 connection with these experi-
ences ; and here is one such conviction : that an
acknowledgment of the perfection of the Infinite
Unseen confers a power nothing else can. An
incontestable point in Divine Science is, that be-
cause God is All, a realization of this fact dispels
even the sense or consciousness of sin, and brings us
nearer to God, bringing out the highest phenomena
of the All-Mind.

^5S)Q^

Sublime cmb lamest.

,ET another query now be considered, which
gives much trouble to many earnest 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
the sense you entertain of it.

It is dangerous to rest upon the evidence of the
senses, for this evidence is not absolute, and there-
fore not real, in our sense of the word. All that is
beautiful and good in your individual consciousness
is permanent. That which is not so is illusive and
fading. My insistence upon a proper understanding
of the unreality of matter and evil arises from their
deleterious effects, physical, moral, and intellectual,
upon the race.

All forms of error are uprooted in Science, on

Seedtime and Harvest. 1 1

the same principle whereby sickness is healed, —
namely, by the establishment, through reason, rev-
elation, and Science, of the nothingness of every
claim of error, even the doctrine of heredity, and
other physical causes. I demonstrate the process
of Science ; for it proves my view conclusively, that
mortal mind is the cause of all disease. Destroy
the mental sense of the disease, and the disease
itself disappears. Destroy the sense of sin, and
sin itself disappears.

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

The talent and genius of the centuries have
wrongly reckoned. They have not based upon
revelation their arguments and conclusions as to
the source and resources of Being, — its combina-
tions, phenomena, and outcome, — but have built
instead upon the sand of human reason. They

12 Unity of Good.

have not accepted the simple teaching and life of
Jesus, as the only true solution of the perplexing
problem of human existence.

Sometimes it is said, by those who fail to under-
stand me, that I monopolize ; and this is said
because ideas akin to mine have been held by a
few spiritual thinkers in all ages. So they have,
but in a far different form. Healing has gone on
continually ; yet healing, as I teach it, has not been
practised since the days of Christ.

What is the cardinal point of the difference in
my metaphysical system? This: that by denying the
reality of disease, sin, and death, I demonstrate the
Allness of God. This difference wholly separates
my system from all others. The reality of these
so-called existences I deny, because I do not find
them in God, and this system is built on Him as
the Supreme Being, or Sole Cause. I challenge my
critics to name any previous teachers, save Jesus
and his Apostles, who have thus taught.

If there be any monopoly in my teaching, it lies
in this utter reliance upon the One God, to whom
belong all things.

Life is God, or Spirit, the supersensible Eternal.

Seedtime and Harvest. 1 3

The universe and man are the spiritual phenomena
of this One Infinite Mind. Spiritual phenomena
never converge toward aught but Infinite Deity.
Their gradations are spiritual and divine ; they can
not collapse, or lapse into their opposites, for God
is their Divine Principle. They live, because He
lives ; and they are eternally perfect, because He is
perfect, and governs them in the Truth of Divine
Science, whereof God is the Alpha and Omega, the
centre and circumference.

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

God was not in the whirlwind. He is not the
blind force of a material universe. Mortals must
learn this ; unless, pursued by their fears, they would
endeavor to hide from His presence under their
own falsities, and call in vain for the mountains of
unholiness to shield them from the penalty of error.

Jesus taught us to walk over, not into or with, the
currents of matter, or mortal mind. His teachings
beard the lions in their dens. He turned the water
into wine, he commanded the winds, he healed the

*4 Unity of Good.

sick, — all in direct opposition to human philoso-
phy, and so-called natural science. He annulled
the laws of matter, showing them to be laws of
mortal mind, not of God. He showed the need
of changing this mind and its abortive laws. He
demanded a change of consciousness and evidence,
and effected this change through the higher laws
of God. The palsied hand moved, despite the
boastful sense of physical law and order. Jesus
stooped not to human consciousness, 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 off this vain boasting, and
destroyed human pride, by taking away the material
evidence. If his patient was a theologian of some
bigoted sect, a physician, or a professor of natural
philosophy, — according to the ruder sort then prev-
alent, — he never thanked Jesus for restoring his
senseless hand ; but neither red tape nor indignity
hindered the divine process. Jesus required neither
cycles of time nor thought in order to mature fitness
for perfection and its possibilities. He said, "The
Kingdom of Heaven is here, and is included in
Mind." He declared: "Ye say there are yet four

Seedtime and Harvest 15

months, and then cometh the harvest; but I say,
Look up, not down, for your fields are already
white for the harvest ; and gather the harvest by
mental, not material processes. The laborers are
few in this vineyard of Mind-sowing and reaping ;
but let them apply to the waiting grain the curving
sickle of Mind's eternal circle, and bind it with
bands of Soul."

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(El)* flDeep Swings of <&ob.

CIENCE reverses the evidence of the senses
in Theology, on the same principle that
it does in Astronomy. Popular Theology
makes God tributary to man, coming at human
call ; whereas the reverse is true in Science. Men
must approach God reverently, doing their own
work in obedience to divine law, 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,
any more 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 be conscious of sin, His infinite power would
straightway reduce the universe to chaos.

If God has any real knowledge of sin, sickness,
and death, they must be eternal ; since He is, in
the very fibre of His Being, "without beginning
of years or end of days." If God knows that

The Deep Things of God. 17

which is not permanent, it follows that He knows
something which He must learn to unknow, for the
benefit of our race.

Such a view would bring us upon an outworn
theological platform, which contains such planks as
the Divine Repentance, and the belief that God
must one 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 the universe, — earth, man, animals,
plants, the sun, the moon, and "the stars also," —
He should so gain wisdom and power from past
experience, that He could vastly improve upon His
own previous work, — as Burgess, the boatbuilder,
remedies in the Volunteer the shortcomings of the
Puritan's model?

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

The Jehovah, of limited Hebrew faith, might need
repentance, because His created children proved
sinful ; but the New Testament tells us of the Father
of Lights, with whom is "no variableness or shadow
of turning." God is not the shifting vane on the

1 8 Unity of Good.

spire, but the corner-stone of living rock, firmer than
everlasting hills.

As God is Mind, if this Mind is familiar with evil,
all can not be good therein. Our infinite model
would be taken away. What is in Eternal Mind
must be reflected in man, Mind's image. How
then could man escape, or hope to escape, from a
knowledge which is everlasting in his Creator?

God never said that man would become better by
learning to distinguish evil from good, — but the
contrary, that by this knowledge, by man's first
disobedience, came "death into the world, and all
our woe."

"Shall mortal man be more just than God?"
asks the Poet-Patriarch. May men rid themselves
of an incubus which God never can throw off ? Do
mortals know more than God, that they may declare
Him absolutely cognizant of sin?

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

If man must be destroyed by the knowledge oi

The Deep Things of God. 19

evil, then his destruction comes through the very
knowledge caught from God, and the creature is
punished for his likeness to his Creator.

God is commonly called the sinless, and man
the sinful; but if the thought of sin could be pos-
sible in Deity, would Deity then be sinless? Would
God not of necessity take precedence as the Infinite
Sinner, and human sin become only an echo of the
divine?

Such vagaries are to be found in heathen religious
history. There are, or have 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 they wish to bribe
with prayers into quiescence, as a criminal appeases,
with a money-bag, the venal officer.

Surely this is no Christian worship ! In Christ-
ianity, man bows to the Infinite Perfection, which
he is bidden to imitate. In Truth, such terms as
divine sin and infinite sinner are unheard-of contra-
dictions, — absurdities ; but would they be sheer
nonsense, if God has, or can have, a real knowl-
edge of sin?

toajis $igl)jer tljan (£)nv toajis.

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 of Eternal Truth.

Emerson says, "Hitch your wagon to a star,"
that you may be allied to the Deific Power, and
have the planets aid your journey, as the stars in
their courses fought against Sisera. (Judges v. 20. )
Hourly, in Christian Science, man thus weds him-
self with God, or rather he ratifies a union predes-
tined from all eternity ; but Evil ties its wagonload
of offal to the divine chariots, — or seeks so to
do, — that its vileness may be christened purity,
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 right
apprehension of the wonderful utterances of him
who "spake as never man spake," would despoil

— ■>

I

Ways Higher than Our Ways. 21

error of its borrowed plumes, and transform the
universe into a home of marvellous light, — "a
consummation devoutly to be wished."

Error says : God must know evil because He
knows all things;" but Holy Writ declares, God
told our first parents that in the day when they
should partake of the fruit of evil, they must
surely die. Would it not absurdly follow that
God must perish, if He knows evil, and evil neces-
sarily leads to 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 brightness of My own Glory."

Error may say that God can never save man from
sin, if He knows and sees it not; but God says:
"I am too pure to behold iniquity, and yet I save
man from everything that is unlike Myself."

Many fancy that our Heavenly Father reasons
thus: "If pain and sorrow were not in My Mind,
I could not put them away, and wipe the tears from
the eyes of My children." Error says: "You must
know grief in order to console it." Is this true?
Do we not oftenest console others in troubles that we
have outgrown? Is not our comforter always from
outside and above ourselves?

'

22 Unity of Good.

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

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

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

With God, knowledge is necessarily foreknoivledge ;
and foreknowledge and foreordination must be one,
in an Infinite Being. What Deity foreknows Deity
must foreordain ; else He is not omnipotent, and,
like ourselves, He foresees events which are contrary
to His creative will, yet which He can not avert.

If God knows evil at all, He must have had fore-
knowledge thereof ; and if He foreknew it, He must
virtually have intended it, or ordered it aforetime, —
foreordained it ; else how could it have come into
the world?

Ways Higher than Our Ways.

23

But this we can not believe ol God ; for if the
Supreme Good could predestine or foreknow evil,
there would be sin in Deity, and this would be the
end of Infinite Moral Unity. " If the light that is
in Thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! "
On the contrary, evil is only a delusive deception,
without any actuality which Truth can know.

r^Xsfc^

notifications.

'OW is a mistake to be rectified? By reversal
or revision, — by seeing it in its 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 into authority : —
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 all hate and the
sense of evil. You will awake to the perception of

\

Rectifications. 2 s

God as All-in-all. You will find yourself losing the
knowledge and the operation of sin, proportionably
as you realize the Divine Infinitude, and believe
that He can see nothing outside of His own focal
distance.

ft €olloqn$.

N Romans (ii. 15) we read the Apostle's descrip-
tion of mental processes wherein human thoughts
are "meanwhile accusing or else excusing one
another." If we observe our mental processes, we
shall find that we are perpetually arguing with our-
selves ; yet each mortal is not two personalities, but
one.

In like manner Good and Evil talk to one another;
yet they are not two but one, for Evil is naught, and
Good only is reality.

Evil. God hath said : "Ye shall eat of every tree
of the garden." If you do not, your intellect will
be circumscribed, and the evidence of your personal
senses be denied. This would antagonize individual
consciousness and existence.

Good. The Lord is God. With Him is no con-
sciousness of evil, because there is nothing beside j
Him, or outside of Him. Individual consciousness
in man is inseparable from Good. There is no

A Colloquy. 2 7

sensible matter, no sense in matter; but there is
a spiritual sense, a sense of Spirit, and this is the
only consciousness belonging to true individuality,
| or a divine sense of Being.

Evil. Why is this so?

Good. Because man is made after God's eternal

ikeness, and this likeness consists in a sense of har-

Ijnony and immortality, in which no evil can possibly

Well. You may eat of the fruit of godlikeness, but

M to the fruit of ungodliness, which is opposed to

'rruth, — ye shall not touch it, lest ye die.

Evil. But I would taste and know error for
pyself.

Good. Thou shalt not admit that error is some-

ing to know or be known, to eat or be eaten, to

-e or be seen, to feel or be felt. To admit the

iistence of error would be to admit the truth of a

Evil. But there is something besides Good.
>od knows that a knowledge of this something is

28 Unity of Good.

essential to happiness and life. A lie is as genuine
as Truth, though not so legitimate a child of God.
Whatever exists must come from God, and be
important to our knowledge. Error, even, is His
offspring.

Good. Whatever cometh not from the Eternal
Spirit, has its origin in the physical 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 cruel treatment received by old Gloster

from his bastard son Edmund which makes true 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 loyalj
Now God has no bastards to turn again and ren
their Maker. The divine children are born of la
and order, and Truth knows only such.

How well the Shakespearean tale agrees with tht,
word of Scripture, in Hebrews xii. 7, 8: "If ye
endure chastening, God dealeth with you as wit
sons : for what son is he whom the father chastenetl

A Colloquy. 29

not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all
are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons."

The doubtful or spurious evidence of the senses
is not to be admitted, — especially when they testify
concerning Spirit, whereof they are confessedly
incompetent to speak.

Evil. But mortal mind and sin really exist !

Good. How can they exist, unless God has cre-
ated them? And how can He create anything so
wholly unlike Himself, and foreign to His nature?
An evil material mind, so-called, can conceive of
God only as like itself, and knowing both evil and
good ; but a purely good and spiritual consciousness
has no sense whereby to cognize evil. Mortal mind
is the opposite of Immortal Mind, and sin the oppo-
site of goodness. I am the Infinite All. From me
* proceedeth all Mind, all consciousness, all individ-
uality, all being. My Mind is Divine Good, and
can not drift into evil. To believe in minds many is
to depart from the Supreme sense of harmony. Your
assumptions insist that there is more than the one
Mind, more than the one God ; but verily I say

--- =-

30 Unity of Good.

unto you, God is All-in-all ; and you can never be
outside of His Oneness.

Evil. I am a finite consciousness, a material
individuality, — a mind in matter, which is both
evil and good.

Good. All Consciousness is Mind ; and Mind is
God, — an infinite, and not a finite consciousness.
This consciousness is reflected in individual con-
sciousness, or man, whose source is Infinite Mind.
There is no really finite mind, no finite conscious-
ness. There is no material substance, for Spirit is
all that endureth, and hence is the only Substance.
There is, can be, no evil mind, because Mind is
God. God and His ideas — that is, God and the
Universe — constitute all that exists. Man as God's
offspring, must be spiritual, perfect, eternal.

Evil. I am something separate from Good or
God. I am Substance. My mind is more than
matter. In my mortal mind, matter becomes con-
scious, and is able to see, taste, hear, feel, smell.
Whatever matter thus affirms is mainly correct. If

v^r

A Colloqtty. 31

you, oh Good, deny this, then I deny your truthful-
ness. If you say that matter is unconscious, you
stultify my intellect, insult my conscience, and dis-
pute self-evident facts ; for nothing can be clearer
than the testimony of the five senses.

Good. Spirit is the only Substance. Spirit is
God, and God is Good ; hence Good is the only
Substance, the only Mind. Mind is not, can not
be, in matter. It sees, hears, feels, tastes, smells
as mind, and not as matter. Matter can not talk ;
and hence, whatever it appears to say of itself is a
lie. This lie, that Mind can be in matter, — claim-
ing to be something beside God, denying Truth and
its demonstration in Christian Science, — this lie I
declare an illusion. This denial enlarges the human
intellect, by removing its evidence from sense to
Soul, and from finiteness into Infinity. It honors
conscious human individuality, by showing God as
its source.

Evil. I am a creator, — but upon a material, not .
a spiritual basis. I give life, and I can destroy
life.

32 Unity of Good.

Good. Evil is not a creator. God, Good, is the
only Creator. Evil is not conscious or conscientious
Mind ; it is not individual, not actual. Evil is not
spiritual, and therefore has no groundwork in Life,
whose only Source is 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 own innate selfhood, and the
capacity to evolve mind. God is in matter, and
matter reproduces God. From Him come my
forms, near or remote. This is my honor, that God
is my author, authority, governor, disposer. I am
proud to be in His outstretched hands, and I shirk
all responsibility for myself as Evil, and for my
varying manifestations.

Good. You mistake, oh Evil! God is not your
authority and law. Neither is He the author of the
material changes, the phantasma, a belief in which
leads to such teaching as we find in the hymn-verse
so often sung in church :

XST

A Colloquy. -$$

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 true that cha?ice and change are
universal factors, — that man decays ? Many ordinary
Christians protest against this stanza of Bowring's,
and its sentiment is foreign to Christian Science.
If God be changeless goodness* as sings another line
of this hymn, what place has chance in the divine
economy? Nay, there is in God naught fantastic.
All is real, all is serious. The phantasmagoria is a
product of human dreams.

&l)e €90.

ROM various friends comes inquiry as to the
meaning of a word employed in the foregoing
colloquy.

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

An egotist is one who talks much of himself.
Egotism implies vanity and self-conceit.

Egoism is a more philosophical word, signifying a
passionate love of self, which doubts all existence
except its own. An egoist, therefore, is one 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.

s.

Curing Soul.

E 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 the scalpel nor cut with the dissecting-
knife. The five physical senses do not cognize it.

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

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

Soul must be God ; since we learn Soul only as we
learn God, by spiritualization. As the five senses
take no cognizance of Soul, so they take no cog-
nizance of God. Whatever can not be taken in

36 Unity of Good.

by mortal mind — by human reflection, reason, or
belief — must be the unfathomable Mind, which
"eye hath not seen nor ear heard." Soul stands
in this relation to every hypothesis as to its human
character.

If Soul sins, it is a sinner, and Jewish law con-
demned the sinner to death, — as does all criminal
law, to a certain extent.

As Spirit, Soul is immortal, because Spirit is God.
Hence as Spirit, Soul never sins. Spirit is Life.
Hence there is, there can be, no spiritual death.

Transcending the evidence of the material senses,
Science declares God to be 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 can
not define from any standpoint of their own. What
the physical senses miscall Soul, Christian Science
defines as Material Sense ; and herein lies the dis-
crepancy between the true Science of Soul, and
that material sense of a soul which that very sense

Living Soul. 37

declares can never be seen or measured or weighed
or touched by physicality.

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 cast down
oh my soul [sense] ? . . . Hope thou in God [Soul] ,
for I shall yet praise Him 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 sole origin of man, she exclaimed, " My
soul [sense] doth magnify the Lord."

Human language constantly uses the word soul
for sense. This it does, under the delusion that the
senses can reverse the spiritual facts of Science ;
whereas Science reverses the testimony of the senses.

Soul is Life, and being Spiritual Life, never sins.
Material sense is the so-called material life. Hence
this lower sense sins and suffers, according to mate-
rial belief, till divine understanding takes away this
belief, and restores Soul, or Spiritual Life. "He
restoreth my Soul," says David.

In his First Epistle to the Corinthians (xv. 45)
Paul writes: "The first man Adam was made a
living soul ; the last man Adam, a quickening Spirit."

38 Unity of Good.

The Apostle refers to the second Adam as the Mes-
siah, our blessed Master, whose interpretation of
God and His creation — by restoring the spiritual
sense of man, as immortal instead of mortal — made
humanity victorious over death and the grave.

When I discovered the power of Spirit to break
the cords of matter, through a change in the mortal
sense of things, then I discerned the last Adam as
a quickening Spirit, and understood the meaning of
the declaration of Holy Writ, "The first shall be
last," — the living Soul shall be found a quickening
Spirit ; or, rather, shall reflect the Life of the Divine
Arbiter.

^^jp

^^

®bere is no JH alter.

OD is a Spirit " (or, more accurately trans-
lated," God is Spirit"), declares the
v f" Scripture (John iv. 24), "and they who
worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in
Truth."

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

The tendency of Christianity is to spiritualize
thought and action. The demonstrations of Jesus
annulled the claims of matter, and overruled laws
material 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 so
endowed, produces life and death.

Hence my conscientious position, in the denial
of matter, rests on the fact that matter usurps the
authority of God, Spirit; and the nature and char-

40 Unity of Good.

acter of matter, the antipode of Spirit, include
all that denies and defies Spirit, in quantity or
quality.

This subject can be enlarged. It can be shown,
in detail, that evil does not 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 a false, claim, — false to God. false to
Truth and Life. Hence the claim of matter 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 and the uni-
verse are His spiritual concepts. By matter is
commonly meant mind, — not the highest Mind, but
a false form of mind. This so-called mind and
matter can not be separated in origin and action.

What is this mind? It is not the Mind of Spirit ; for
spiritualization of thought 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 I prefer to call
mortal mind. True Mind is immortal. This mortal

There is no Matter. 41

mind declares itself material, in sin, sickness,
and death, virtually saying: "I am the opposite
of Spirit, of Holiness, Harmony, and Life."

To this declaration Christian Science responds,
in the words of our Master: "You were a murderer
from the beginning. The Truth abode not in you.
You are a liar, and the father of it." Here it
appears that a liar was in the neuter gender, —
neither masculine nor feminine. Hence it was not
man (the image of God) who lied, but the false
claim to personality, which I call mortal mind ; a
claim which Christian Science uncovers, in order to
demonstrate the falsity of the claim.

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

The physical senses (matter really having no sense)
give the only pretended testimony 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 bear witness
of myself, my witness is not true." (John v. 31.)

In other words: matter testifies of itself, "I am
matter ; " but unless matter is mind, it can not talk or

42 Unity of Good.

testify ; and if it is mind, it is certainly not the Mind
of Christ, not the Mind that is identical with Truth.

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

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

Sight. Mortal mind declares that matter sees,
through the organizations of matter, or that mind
sees by means of matter. Disorganize the so-called
material structure, and then mortal mind says: "I
can not see ; " and declares that matter is the master
of mind, and that non-intelligence governs. Mor-
tal mind admits that it sees only material images,
pictured on the eye's retina.

What then is the line of the syllogism? It must

There is no Matter. 43

be this : That matter is not seen ; that mortal mind
can not see without matter ; and therefore that the
whole function of material sight is an illusion, a lie.

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

Touch. Take another train of reasoning. Mortal
mind says that matter can not 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 is substantial, is hot or cold?
Take away mortal mind, and matter could not feel
what it calls substance. Take away matter, and
mortal mind could not cognize its own so-called
substance, and this so-called mind would have no
identity. Nothing would remain to be seen or felt.

What is Substance ? W T hat is the reality of God and
the universe? Immortal Mind is the real Substance,
— Spirit, Life, Truth, and Love.

Taste. Mortal mind says ' ' I taste ; and this is

44 Unity of Good.

sweet, this is sour." Let mortal mind change, and
say that sour is sweet, and so it would be. If every
mortal mind believed sweet to be sour, it would
be so ; for the qualities of matter are but qualities
of mortal mind. Change the mind, and the qual-
ity changes. Destroy the belief, and the quality
disappears.

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

Force. What is gravitation? Mortal mind says,
Gravitation is a material power, or force. I ask,
Which was first, matter or power? That which was
first was God, Immortal Mind, the Parent of all.
But God is Truth, and the forces of Truth are moral
and spiritual, not physical. They are not the mer-
ciless forces of matter. What then are the so-called
forces of matter? They are the phenomena of mor-
tal mind, and matter and mortal mind are one ; and
this one is a misstatement of Mind, God.

7*5"

There is no Matter.

45

A molecule, as matter, is not formed by Spirit ;
for Spirit is spiritual consciousness alone. Hence
this spiritual consciousness can form nothing unlike
itself, Spirit, and Spirit is the only Creator. The
material atom is an outlined falsity of consciousness,
which can gather additional evidence of conscious-
ness and life, only as it adds lie to lie. This process
it names material attraction, and endows with the
double capacity of creator and creation.

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

This whole subject is met and solved by Christian
Science according to Scripture. Thus we see that
Spirit is Truth and Eternal Reality ; that matter is
the opposite of Spirit, — referred to in the New Tes-
tament as the flesh at war with Spirit; hence, that
matter is erroneous, transitory, unreal.

A further proof of this is the demonstration,
according to Christian Science, that by the reduction

46 Unity of Good.

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 of moral evil, sin, or to say that
the Divine Mind is conscious of evil, yet is not con-
scious of matter, is erroneous. This error stultifies
the logic of Divine Science, and must interfere with
its practical demonstration.

IF

■eer

Is ®liere no EDcatl)?

ESUS not only said "I am the Way and the
Truth," but also, "I am the Life." 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 is at hand."
Then God and Heaven, or Life, are present, and
death is not the real stepping-stone to Life and hap-
piness. They are now and here ; and a change in
human consciousness, from sin to holiness, would
reveal this wonder of Being. Because God is ever-
present, no boundary of time can separate us from
Him, and the Heaven of His presence ; and because
God is Life, all Life is eternal.

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

Human beings are physically mortal, but individ-
ually immortal. The evil, accompanying physical

48 Unity of Good.

personality, is illusive and mortal ; but the good
attendant upon spiritual individuality is immortal.
Existing here and now, this unseen individuality is
real and eternal. The so-called material senses, and
the mortal mind which is misnamed man, take no
cognizance of spiritual individuality, which manifests
Immortality, whose Principle is God.

To God alone belong the indisputable realities of
Being. Death is a contradiction of Life, or God ;
therefore it is not in accordance with His law, but
antagonistic thereto.

Death then is error, opposed to Truth, — even the
unreality of mortal mind, not the reality of that Mind
which is Life. Error has no Life, and is virtually
without existence. Life is real ; and all is real which
proceeds from 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 Life robs God, by declaring that not He
alone is Life, but that something else also is Life, —
thus affirming the existence and rulership of more

Is there no Death ? 49

gods than one. This idolatrous and false sense of
Life is all that dies, or appears to 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 in aught
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 is not in
these kingdoms, and that the popular views to this
effect are not up to the Christian standard of Life,
or equal to the reality of Being, whose Principle is
God.

When "the Word is made flesh " among mortals,
the Truth of Life is rendered practical on the body.
Eternal Life is partially understood ; and sickness,
sin, and death yield to Holiness, Health, and Life, —
that is, to God. The lust of the flesh and the pride
of physical life must be quenched in the Divine
Essence, — that omnipotent Love which -annihilates
hate, that Life which knows no death.

"Who hath believed our report?" Who under-
stands these sayings? He to whom the arm of

50 Unity of Good.

the Lord is revealed. He loves them from whom
Divine Science removes 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 to God, claims another
father, and denies spiritual sonship ; but as many
as receive the knowledge of God in Science must
reflect, in some degree, the power of Him who gave
man dominion over all the earth.

As Soldiers of the Cross we must be brave, and
let Science declare the immortal status of man,
and deny the evidence of the material senses, which
testify that man dies.

As the image of God, or Life, man forever reflects
and embodies Life, not death. The material senses
testify falsely. They presuppose that God is good
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 of the 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 of material sense, called death, is

Is there no Death ? 51

to assert what we have not proved. Even such
folly and presumption are among the environments
of material sense which must perish, in order to
prove man deathless.

As Truth supersedes error, and bears the fruits
of Love, this understanding of Truth subordinates
the belief in death, and demonstrates Life as imper-
ative in the divine order of Being.

Jesus declares that they who believe his sayings
will never die ; therefore mortals can no more receive
everlasting Life by believing in death, than they can
become perfect by believing in imperfection, and
living imperfectly.

Life is God, and God is Good. Hence Life
abides in man; and man abides in Life, if he lives
in God, who holds Life by a spiritual, and not by a
material sense of Being.

A sense of death is not requisite to a proper or
true sense of Life, but beclouds it. Death can never
alarm or even appear to him who fully understands
Life. The death-penalty comes through our igno-
rance of Life, — of that which is without beginning
and without end, — and is the punishment of this
ignorance.

52 Unity of Good.

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 material apprehends
nothing strictly belonging to the nature and office
of Life. It conceives and beholds nothing but mor-
tality, and has but a feeble concept of immortality.

In order to reach the true knowledge and con-
sciousness of Life, we must learn it of Good. Of
evil we can never learn it, because sin shuts out the
real 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 of Good, God ; and to know death,
or to believe in it, involves a temporary loss of God,
the infinite and only Life.

Resurrection from the Dead (that is, from the
Belief in Death) must come to all sooner or later;
and they who have part in this resurrection are they
upon whom the Second Death has no power.

The sweet and sacred sense of the permanence of
man's unity with his Maker can illumine our pres-
ent being with a continual presence and power of
Good, opening wide the portal from death into Life ;
and when this Life shall appear "we shall be like

Is there no Death? 53

Him," and we shall go to the Father, not through
death, 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 not death,
because God can not be the opposite of Himself.
In Christian Science there is no matter ; hence mat-
ter neither lives nor dies. To the senses, matter
appears to both live and die, and these phenomena
appear to go on ad infinitum ; but such a theory-
implies perpetual 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 of Spirit, Holiness, and Life.
What then are matter, sin, and death? They can
be nothing except the results of material conscious-
ness ; but material consciousness can have no real
existence, because it is not a living — that is to say,
a divine and intelligent — reality.

That man must be vicious before he can be vir-
tuous, dying before he can be deathless, material
before he can be spiritual, is an error of the senses ;

54 Unity of Good.

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 Stars sang together, and all
the Sons of God shouted for joy."

With Christ, Life was not merely a sense of
existence, but a sense of might and ability to subdue
material conditions. No wonder "people were
astonished at his doctrines, for he taught them as
one having authority, and not as the Scribes."

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

Truth, defiant of error or matter, is Science, dis-
pelling a false sense, and leading man into the true
sense of selfhood and Godhood ; wherein the mortal
does not develop the immortal, nor the material the
spiritual, but wherein true manhood and womanhood
go forth in the radiance of Eternal Being and its
perfections, unchanged and unchangeable.

This generation seems too material for any strong
demonstration over death, and hence can not bring
out the infinite reality of Life, — namely, that there
is no death, but only Life. The present mortal

Is there no Death? 55

sense of Being is too finite for anchorage in Infinite
Good, God, because mortals now believe in the
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 can not
speak of myself, as ''sufficient for these things." I
insist only upon the fact, as it exists in Divine Sci-
ence, that man dies not, and on the words of the
Master in support of this verity, — words which can
never " pass away till all be fulfilled."

Because of these profound reasons I urge Chris-
tians to have more faith in living than in dying. I
exhort them to accept Christ 's promise, and unite
the influence of their own thoughts with the power of
his teachings, in the Science of Being. This will
interpret the Divine Power to human capacity, and
enable us to apprehend, or lay hold upon, that "for
which," as Paul says in the fifth chapter of Philip-
pians, "we are also apprehended [or grasped] by
Christ Jesus," — the ever-present Life, which knows
no death, the omnipresent Spirit, which knows no
matter.

Jkrsonal Statements.

ANY misrepresentations are made concerning
myself and my doctrines, some of which are
* as unkind and unjust as they are untrue ;

but I can only repeat the Master's words: "They
know not what they do."

The foundations of these assertions, like the struc-
ture 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 T humanity was misled by a
false personality, — a talking snake, — according to
Biblical history. This pretender taught the opposite
of Truth. This abortive ego, this fable of error, is
laid bare in Christian Science.

Human theories call, or miscall, this evil a Child
of God. Philosophy would multiply and subdivide
personality into everything that exists, whether ex-
pressive or not expressive of the Mind which is God.
Human wisdom says of evil, "The Lord knows it! "

\

Personal Statements. 5 7

thus carrying out the Serpent's assurance : " In the
day ye eat thereof [when you, lie, get the floor], then
your eyes shall be opened [you shall be conscious
matter], and ye shall be as gods, knowing good 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 in Christian Science, and it stings
your heel, rears its crest proudly, and goes on say-
ing: "Am I not myself? Am I not mind and mat-
ter, person and thing? " We should answer: "Yes!
you are indeed yourself, and need most of all to be
rid of this self, for it is very far from God's likeness."

The egotist must come down and learn, in humil-
ity, that God never made evil. An evil ego, and his
assumed power, are falsities. These falsities need a
denial. The falsity is the teaching that matter can
be conscious ; and conscious matter implies Panthe-
ism. This Pantheism I unveil. I try to show its
all-pervading presence in certain forms of theology
and philosophy, 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

58 Unity of Good.

goes forth into an imaginary sphere of its own cre-
ation and limitation, until it finally dies in order to
better itself. But Truth never dies, and death is not
the goal which Truth seeks.

The evil ego has but the visionary substance of
matter. It lacks the Substance of Spirit, — Mind,
Life, Soul. . Mortal mind is self-creative and self-
sustained, until it becomes non-existent. It has no
origin or existence in Spirit, Immortal Mind, or
Good. Matter is not truly conscious ; and mortal
error, called mind, is not godlike. These are the
shadowy and false, 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 is man's man.

I do not deny, I maintain, the individuality and
reality of man ; but I do so on a divine Principle,
not based on a human conception and birth. The
Scientific man and his Maker are here ; and you
would be none other than this man, if you would
subordinate the fleshly perceptions to the spiritual
sense and Source of Being.

Jesus said, " I and the Father are one." He

Personal Statements. 59

taught no selfhood as existent in matter. In his
identity there is no evil. Individuality and Life
were real to him only as spiritual and good, not as
material or evil. This incensed the rabbins against
Jesus, because it was an indignity to their person-
ality ; and this personality they regarded as both
good and evil, as is still claimed by the worldly wise.
To them evil was even more the Ego than was the
Good. Sin, sickness, and death were evil's con-
comitants. This evil ego they believed must extend
throughout the universe, as being equally identical
and self-conscious with God. This ego was in the
earthquake, thunderbolt, and tempest.

The Pharisees fought Jesus on this issue. It fur-
nished the battleground of the past, as it does of the
present. The fight was an effort to enthrone evil.
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, and, with every passing hour, it
is losing its false claim to existence or consciousness.
All that can exist is God and His idea.

(&vcbo.

TT is fair to ask of everyone a reason for the faith
within. Though it be but to repeat my twice-
told tale, — nay, the tale already told a hundred
times, — 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 any other thing or being. He
sustains my individuality. Nay, more — He is my
individuality 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 of its victory.

To me God is All. He is best understood as
Supreme Being, as infinite and conscious Life, as the
affectionate Father and Mother of all He creates ;
but this Divine Parent no more enters into His
creation, than the human father enters into his child.
His creation is not the Ego, but the reflection of the
Ego. The Ego is God himself, the infinite Soul.

I believe that of which I am conscious through the

Credo. 6 1

understanding, however faintly able to demonstrate
His Truth and Love.

Do you believe in Man ?

I believe in the individual man, for I understand
that man is as definite and eternal as God, and that
man is coexistent with God, as being the eternally-
divine idea. This is demonstrable by the simple
appeal to human consciousness.

But I believe less in the sinner, wrongly named
man. The more I understand true humanhood, the
more I see it to be sinless, — as ignorant of sin 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 glorified conscious-
ness of the only living God and the genuine man. So
long as I hold evil in consciousness, I can not be
wholly good.

You can not simultaneously serve the Mammon of
Materiality and the God of Spirituality. There are
not two realities of Being, two opposite states
of existence. One should appear real to us, and
the other unreal, or we lose the Science of Being.

62 Unity of Good.

Standing in no basic Truth, we make " the worse
appear the better reason," and the unreal masque-
rades as the real, in our thought.

Evil is without Principle. Being destitute of Prin-
ciple, it is devoid of Science. Hence it is undemon-
strable, without proof. This gives me a clearer right
to call evil a negation, than to affirm it to be some-
thing which God sees and knows, but which He
straightway commands mortals to shun or relinquish,
less it destroy them. This notion of the destructi-
bility of Mind implies the possibility of its defilement ;
but how can Infinite Mind be defiled?

Do you believe iti Matter 2

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

At best, matter is only a phenomenon of mortal
mind, of which evil is the highest degree ; but really
there is no such thing as mortal mind, — though we

Credo. 63

are compelled to use the phrase in the endeavor to
express the underlying thought.

In reality there are no material states or stages of
consciousness, and matter 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 for them to evade sin, sickness,
and death, — which are but states of false belief, —
and awake from the troubled dream, a consciousness
which is without Mind or Maker.

Matter and evil can not be conscious, and con-
sciousness 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 reflection of immutable
Good.

Reasoning from false premises, — that Life is mate-
rial, that Immortal Soul is sinful, and hence that sin
is eternal, — the reality of Being is neither seen,
felt, heard, nor understood. Human philosophy and
human reason can never make one hair white or
black, except in belief ; whereas the demonstration

64 Unity of Good.

of God, as in Christian Science, is gained through
Christ as perfect manhood.

In Pantheism the world is bereft of its God, whose
place is ill supplied by the pretentious usurpation,
by matter, of the heavenly sovereignity.

What say you of Woman ?

Man is the generic term for all humanity. Woman
is the highest species of man, and this word is the
generic term for all women ; but not one of all these
individualities is an Eve or an Adam. They have
none of them lost their harmonious state, in the econ-
omy of God's wisdom and government.

The Ego is divine consciousness, eternally radiat-
ing throughout all space in the idea of God, Good,
and not of His opposite, evil. The Ego is revealed
as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ; but the full
Truth is found only in Divine Science, where we see
God as Life, Truth, and Love. In the Scientific
relation of man to God, man is reflected not as
human soul, but as the Divine ideal, whose Soul
is not in body, but in God, — the Divine Principle
of man. Hence it is sinless and immortal , in con-
tradistinction to the supposition that there can be
sinful souls or immortal sinners.

Credo. 65

This Science of God and man is the Holy Ghost,
which reveals and sustains the unbroken and eternal
harmony of God, man, and the universe. It is the
Kingdom of Heaven, the ever-present reign of har-
mony, already with us. Hence the need that human
consciousness should become divine, in the coinci-
dence of God and man, in contradistinction to the
false consciousness of both Good and evil, God and
devil, — of man separated from his Maker. This is
the precious redemption of soul, or mortal sense,
through Christ's immortal sense of Truth, and is
Truth's spiritual idea, called man and woman.

What say you of Evil?

God is not the so-called Ego of evil ; for evil, as a
supposition, is the father of itself, of the material
world, the flesh, and the devil. From this falsehood
arise the self-destroying elements of this world, its
unkind forces, its tempest, lightnings, earthquakes,
poisons, rabid beasts, fatal reptiles and mortals.

Why are earth and mortals so elaborate in beauty,
color, and form, if God has no part in them? By
the law of opposites. The most beautiful blossom is
often poisonous, and the most beautiful mansion is

66 Unity of Good.

sometimes the home of vice. The senses, not the
Soul, form the condition of beautiful evil, and the
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 all its forms
are inverted Good. God never made them ; but the
lie must say He made them, or it would not be evil.
Being a lie, it would be truthful to call itself a lie ;
and by calling the knowledge of evil good, and greatly
to be desired, it constitutes the lie an evil.

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

Matter and evil are anti-christian, the antipodes
of Science. To say that Mind is material, or that
evil is Mind, is a misapprehension of Being, — a
mistake 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 on such false
foundations, which are no more logical, philosophical,
or scientific, than would be the assertion that the rule
of addition is the rule of subtraction, and that sums
done under both rules would have one quotient.

Credo. 67

Our individuality is not a mortal mind or sinner ;
or else we have lost our true individuality, as a
perfect child of God. Our Father is not a mortal
mind and a sinner ; or else the immortal and un-
erring Mind, God, is not our Father; but God is
our origin and loving Father, and hence that saying
of Jesus, " 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 there is of sickness ; for it is nothing but a
false claim. To be healed, one must lose sight of a
false claim. If the claim be present to the thought,
then disease becomes as tangible as any reality.
To regard sickness as a false claim, is to abate the
fear of it ; but this does not destroy the so-called
fact of the claim. In order to be whole, we must
deny every claim of sin.

As with sickness, so is it with sin. To admit that
sin has any claim whatever, just or unjust, is to admit
a dangerous fact. Hence the fact must be denied ;
for if sin's claim be allowed in any degree, then sin
destroys the at-one-ment, or oneness with God, —

68 Unity of Good.

a unity which sin recognizes as its most potent and
deadly enemy.

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

Which is right, God, who denied the claims of
sin, and disowned its acquaintance, or the Serpent,
who pushed that claim with the glittering audacity
of diabolical and sinuous logic?

~^tr"

B

Suffering from ©tiers' S^ottgljts.

ESUS accepted the one fact whereby alone the
rule of Life can be demonstrated, — namely,
that there is no death.

In his own body he bore no infirmities. Though
" a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief,"
as Isaiah says of him, he bore not his sins, but ours,
11 in his own body on the tree." " He was bruised
for our iniquities, and by his stripes we are healed."

He was the Way; and Christian Scientists, who
would demonstrate the Way, 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, in Spirit, is the Way of Life, Truth, and
Love, redeeming us from the false sense of the flesh,
and the wounds it bears. This threefold Messiah
reveals the self-destroying ways of error, and the
Life-giving Way of Truth.

Job's faith and hope gained him the assurance
that by the sufferings of the flesh he should learn how
false are the pleasures and pains of material sense,

70 Unity of Good.

and behold the Truth of Being, as expressed in his
conviction, "Yet in my flesh shall I see God," —
not without my flesh, but in my flesh.

The Chaos of mortal mind is made the stepping-
stone to the Cosmos of Immortal Mind.

If Jesus suffered, as the Scriptures declare, it must
have been from the mentality of others ; since all
suffering comes from mind, not from matter, and

there could be no sin or suffering in his Mind, which
was the Mind of God. Not his own 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 from mentality in opposition to Truth,
are significant of that state of mind which the actual
understanding of Christian Science first eliminates
and then destroys.

In the divine order of Science every follower of
Christ shares his cup of sorrows. He also suffer-
eth in the flesh, and from the mentality which op-
poses the Law of Spirit ; but the Divine Law is
supreme, for it freeth him from the law of sin and
death.

Prophets and Apostles suffered from the thoughts

Suffering f?'om Others' Thoughts. 71

of others. Their conscious being was not fully
exempt from physicality and the sense of sin.

Until he awakes from his delusion, he suffers least,
from sin, who is a hardened sinner. The hypocrite's
affections must first be made to fret in their chains ;
and the pangs of Hell must lay hold of him, ere he
can change from flesh to Spirit, become acquainted
with that Love which is without dissumulation, and
endureth all things. Such mental conditions as in-
gratitude, lust, malice, hate, constitute the miasma
of earth. More obnoxious than Chinese stenchpots
are these dispositions, which offend the spiritual
sense.

Anatomically considered, the design of the material
senses is to warn mortals of the approach of danger,
by the pain they feel and occasion ; but spiritual
sense, foreseeing the impending doom, foretells the
pain and finds refuge in the secret place, " under
the shadow of the Almighty."

The Cross is the central emblem of human history.
Without it there is neither temptation nor glory.
When Jesus turned and said, "Who hath touched
me?" he must have felt the influence of the woman's
thought ; for it is written that he felt that ' ' virtue had

72 Unity of Good.

gone out of him." His pure consciousness was dis-
criminating, and rendered this infallible verdict ; but
he neither held her error by affinity nor by infirmity,
for it was detected and dismissed.

This Gospel of Suffering brought Life and bliss.
This is earth's Bethel in stone, — its pillow, supporting
the ladder which reaches Heaven.

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

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

Sorrow is the harbinger of joy. Mortal throes of
anguish forward the birth of 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 in so-called
existence, are in their native element of error, and
must become dis-eased, disquieted, before they can
get out of error into Truth.

Jesus walked with bleeding feet the thorny earth-
road, treading "the winepress alone." His perse-

Suffering from Others 1 Thoughts. 73

cutors said mockingly, " Save thyself, and come
down from the Cross! " This was the very thing
he was doing, coming down from the Cross, saving
himself as he had saved others, by the law of Spirit's
supremacy ; and this was done through what is
humanly called agony.

Even the icebound hypocrite melts in fervent heat,
before he apprehends Christ as the Way. The
Master's sublime triumph over all mortal mentality
was Immortality's goal. He was too wise not to
be willing to test the full compass of human woe,
being "tempted in all points like as we are, yet
without sin."

Thus the absolute unreality of sin, sickness, and
death were revealed, — a revelation that beams on
mortal sense, as the midnight sun shines over the
Polar Sea.

^®@^

QLtyz Smriour's Jttissiott.

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

Jesus came to earth ; but the Christ (that is, the
Divine Principle which made Jesus the Christ) was
never absent from the earth, and could not come to
it ; for Jesus Christ spoke of himself as one who
came down from Heaven, yet as "the Son of Man
who is in Heaven " (John iii. 13).

Salvation is as eternal as God. To mortal thought
Christ seemed to come as a child, to grow to
manhood, to suffer before Pilate and on Calvary,
because he could reach and teach mankind only
through this conformity to mortal conditions ; but
Soul never saw the Saviour come and go, because he
was always present.

He came to rescue men from these very illusions
to which he seemed to conform : from the illusion

The Saviour's Mission. 75

which calls sin real, and man a sinner, needing a
Saviour ; the illusion which calls sickness real, and
man an invalid, needing a physician; the illusion
that death is as real as Life. From such thoughts —
mortal inventions, one and all — Jesus came to save
men, through ever-present and eternal Good.

Mortal man is a kingdom divided against itself.
With the same breath he articulates truth and error.
We say that God is All, and there is none beside
Him, and then talk of sin and sinners as real. We
call God omnipotent and omnipresent, and then
conjure up, from the dark abyss of nothingness, a
powerful presence named evil. We say that har-
mony is real, and inharmony is its opposite, and
therefore unreal ; yet we descant upon sickness, 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 of God. Out of the same mouth pro-
ceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these
things ought not so to be" (James iii. 9, 10). Mor-
tals are free moral agents, to choose whom they
would serve. If God, then let them serve Him, and
He will be unto them All-in-all.

y6 Unity of Good.

If God is ever-present, He is neither absent from
Himself nor from the universe. Without Him, the
universe would collapse, and space, substance, and
immortality be lost. Saint Paul says: "And if
Christ be not raised, your faith is vain ; ye are
yet in your sins" (i Corinthians xv. 17). Christ
can not come to mortal and material sense, which
sees not God. This false sense must yield to His
eternal presence, and so disappear. Rising above
the false, to the true evidence of Life, is the resur-
rection that takes hold of eternal Truth. Coming
and going belong to mortal consciousness. God
is "the same, yesterday, today, and forever."

To material sense, Jesus first appeared as a helpless
human babe ; but to immortal and spiritual vision
he was one with the Father, even the eternal idea
of God, that was — and is — neither young nor old,
neither dead nor risen. The mutations of mortal
sense are the evening and the morning of human
thought, — the twilight and dawn of earthly vision,
which precedeth the nightless radiance of Divine
Life. Human perception, advancing toward the
apprehension of the unchangeable God, halts,
retreats, and again goes forward ; but the Divine

The Saviour's Mission. 77

Principle is always the same, — neither advancing,
retreating, nor halting.

Our highest sense of infinite Good in this mortal
sphere is but the sign and symbol, not the Substance
of Good. Only faith and a feeble understanding
make the earthly acme of human sense. "The Life
which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of
the Son of God " (Galatians ii. 20).

Christian Science is both demonstration and frui-
tion, but how attenuated are our demonstration and
realization of this Science ! Truth, in Divine Sci-
ence, is the stepping-stone to the understanding of
God ; but the broken and contrite heart soonest
discerns this Truth, even as the helpless sick are
soonest healed by it. Invalids say, " I have recov-
ered 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;" yet God dies not, and is
the ever-presence that neither comes nor goes, and
man is forever His image and likeness. "• The
things which are seen are temporal, but the things
which are unseen are eternal" (2 Corinthiaks
iv. 18). This is the mystery of godliness — that

78 Unity of Good.

God, Good, is never absent, and there is none
beside Good. Mortals can understand this only as
they reach the Life of Good, and learn that there
is no Life in evil. Then shall it appear that the
true ideal of omnipotent and ever-present Good is
an ideal wherein and wherefor there is no evil. Sin
exists only as a sense, and not as Soul. Destroy
this sense of sin, and sin disappears. Sickness, sin,
and death are the false senses of Life and Good.
Destroy this Trinity of error, and you find Truth.

In Science, Christ never died. In sense Jesus
died, and lives again. The fleshly Jesus seemed
to die, though he did not. The Truth of Life
in Divine Science — undisturbed by human error,
sin, and death — saith forever, "I am the living
God, and man is My idea, never in matter, nor
resurrected from it. 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 that can be buried or resurrected.

Mary had risen to discern faintly God's ever-
presence, and that of His idea, man ; but her mortal
sense, reversing Science and spiritual understand-
ing, interpreted this appearing as a risen Christ.

The Saviour's Mission. 79

The I Am was neither buried nor resurrected. The
Way, the Truth, and the Life were never absent
for a moment. This Trinity of Love lives and
reigns forever. Its kingdom, not apparent to mate-
rial sense, never disappeared to spiritual sense, but
remained forever in the Science of Being. The
so-called appearing, disappearing, and reappearing
of Ever-presence, in whom is no variableness or
shadow of turning, is the false human sense of that
" Light which shineth in darkness, and the darkness
comprehendeth it not."

^R)(5^

3o^ \

C*~

/</

Srnnmarrj,

LL that is, God created. If sin has any
pretence of existence, God is responsible
therefor; but there is no reality in sin, for
God can no more behold 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 found-
ations of an Eternal Mind, which is conscious of
sickness, sin, and death, is a moral impossibility ;
for " other foundation can no man lay than that
is laid" (i Corinthians iii. n). The nearer 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 of ever elud-
ing their dread presence must yield to despair, and
the haunting sense of evil forever accompany our
being.

Mortals may climb the smooth glaciers, leap the
dark fissures, scale the treacherous ice, and stand on
the summit of Mont Blanc ; but they can never turn
back what Deity knoweth, nor escape from identifi-
cation with what dwelleth in the Eternal Mind.