Article June 9, 1906 Issue

The Consciousness of Good

FRANCES HOLBROOK PFEIFFER.

When first I heard a Christian Scientist say that God knows good only, I could not see the truth of it, but experience had taught me that there were some things which in all probability I did not know, and it occurred to me that this might be one such truth. About a year afterwards I read the first chapter in "Unity of Good" by Mrs. Eddy, and while there came to me a clearer sense of the glorious truth, I still wondered how God could heal us of sin and disease if He did not know about them, so I left it for another few months, until the study of the Lesson-Sermon, "Are Sin, Disease, and Death Real?" made it yet clearer to me. I now see how God heals us of that of which He has no consciousness.

Any thoughtful person, in or out of Science, must admit that God—Life, Truth, Love—does not experience sin, sickness, and death. If He does not experience them, they are not in His consciousness, for actual knowledge is only in the ratio of experience. I have come to see that neither the experience nor the knowledge of evil are a part of divine consciousness. God did not create sin, disease, and death, and hence He surely is not conscious of them. If He did not create them, they do not exist. He is omniscient,—knowing all there is to know. The results of belief in matter, sin, disease, and death, all inharmony, exist only in mortal mind, and God, being all wisdom, is not touched by false knowledge, and so He is not aware of that which has its existence only in falsity. Everything unlike God exists only in falsity, if it is not in Truth and wisdom,—God.

The study of our text-book shows that God heals us of sin and disease not by knowing that which does not exist, but by remaining God, good,—ever-present Life, Truth, and Love,—the source of unchanging, everlasting goodness and harmony. As we get even a glimpse of what God is, and as we shut out all that is unlike God, and which cannot exist because God is all, we are healed. It also becomes clear that God is not conscious of our illusions but conscious of man as he really is,—spiritual; reflecting Life, Truth, Love, health, harmony, holiness. He knows this, for He knows all there is to know about us, and when we know this same truth we know all there is to know about ourselves; the illusion—sin, disease, and death—ceases to exist to us and we are healed. We cannot know more than God knows, and God being Truth cannot for an instant be conscious of untruth. When we realize this, we have rid ourselves of our own lack of understanding,—of illusions,—the only abiding-place of sin, disease, and death.

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