Editorial October 1, 1910 Issue

"YE SHALL BE AS GODS"

John B. Willis

Had Eve been half awake to Truth, she would have surmised, at least, that the serpent's promise of wisdom was an allurement of error. She was deceived into the acceptance of a statement which was utterly incongruous with the most fundamental fact of her being, her knowledge of the one God and man in the likeness of immortal Truth. Moreover, what was true then is forever true, that the creature of God's creation cannot be deceived; therefore, the claim of selfhood which can be deceived is not a verity, but is in itself a falsity. This is one of the first and most fundamental declarations of Christian Science.

The moment we begin to think of Adam and Eve as embodiments of material sense, the nature of their impulse and experience can be understood. Light dawns at once, too, upon the forever insistent question, How could the image of God be fooled into the acceptance of error for truth, or find evil more attractive than good? The answer of Christian Science is that God's image is not involved in the tragedy, that man is forever unfallen as light is forever undarkened,—a proposition which fully accords with the logic of the universally accepted Scripture teaching that man is made in the divine likeness. This phrase "as gods" is but an epitome of that lure of evil which means for mortals today just what it meant in the long ago, viz., the promised possession of the things that are longed for by material sense,—and for these how easily do men still forget Spirit and its demands, duty and its call, even as did Eve.

More than this, to mortal sense this seduction means freedom, the privilege of doing as one pleases, and this is evil's subtlest deception. Men are most frequently and fatefully tripped by being led to believe that conformity to divine law means limitation, that license means liberty. And this seems the more surprising in view of the fact that in the whole realm of physical science and common life, everybody recognizes that conformity to law is not only wise but absolutely essential to one's well-being. He who was indifferent to gravitation or any other so-called law of the physical universe, would be accounted daft by mortal sense, and yet there is no temptation which is more frequently welcomed by men than this old suggestion of Satan that one can have a better time, a larger sense of personal satisfaction, when he does not have to conform to the eternal law of good, the requirements of the spiritual ideal. Evil's cleverness and cruelty are seen alike when men are mesmerized into the belief that sin is sweet, that thereby they may become "as gods." Let him who doubts this read again the story of a De Quincy or a Poe.

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