Article November 5, 1910 Issue

What Christian Science says of sin is exactly what it...

Frederick Dixon

Bath (Eng.) Chronicle.

What Christian Science says of sin is exactly what it says of sickness, or of evil of any sort, namely, that though relatively speaking it is terribly real to the human consciousness, it is, none the less, speaking in an absolutely scientific sense, unreal, inasmuch as it is not God-created. Now, if sin is real, it must have been created by God, for God, the Bible declares, created all things, and declared His creation good. Therefore, if sin is real, not only is it God-created, but it is good. The alternative to this is inevitable. If God did not create sin, and yet it is real, it must have created itself, and so you have two creative powers, one of good and one of evil. Nor is this all; Jesus distinctly declared that a good tree could not bring forth corrupt fruit, neither a corrupt tree good fruit, so that neither good nor evil can possibly be the first cause, since neither could have produced the other, and so logically man would be driven to the admission that the first cause was a joint knowledge of good and evil, and this is practically what orthodox theology does teach.

Now, the only evidence of the reality of sin is the evidence given by the human senses. But until the human senses are educated to a higher perception of Truth they are deceived in innumerable ways. The ordinary man, for instance, is convinced that the sun moves round the earth. Only as he learns more of the science of astronomy, does he learn something of the truth which frees him from that false belief. Jesus said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." What was the truth about evil which, as he taught it, was to free the world from the belief in the power and reality of evil? Speaking after the manner of the age and country in which he taught, he personified it, called it "devil," and "Satan," but never gave it power or reality. He was a liar, he said, and abode not in the truth, because there was no truth in him. Reduce that phrase to the normal idiom of the west, and what does it come to but this; evil is a lie, it never had any real existence. It was the knowledge of this that enabled him to overcome evil with good, with the realization that good is the only power and only reality. God, the Bible declares, made all that was made and pronounced it good.

It is manifest, therefore, that good alone is real, and that evil or sin is nothing but a false belief, accepted by the human senses until man begins to learn the truth which Christ Jesus declared would bring him freedom. "How true it is," Mrs. Eddy writes, on page 312 of Science and

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