Christian Science has now been known and taught...
The Christian Science Monitor
Christian Science has now been known and taught long enough for its effect on a second generation to be observed. When this Science is grasped by an adult, displacing beliefs to which he has long been accustomed, it gives him a new world; the world of the material senses is exchanged for the world of spiritual sense. The quickness and completeness of this change vary with different students, but any one who has formed the impressions of childhood without the teachings of Christian Science must have accepted as truth much that Christian Science rejects as error; and this must be in large part uprooted and cast out before the spiritual view of things becomes more natural to him than the material. In his talk with Nicodemus Christ Jesus likened this process to being born again.
On the other hand, children who develop with the knowledge of Christian Science learn less which must be unlearned. Having the understanding of Christian Science by which to test everything offered as knowledge, they learn the lessons of human life for what they are worth in the eternal scale of values. To them heavenly things are normal and natural, and they can therefore say or think, when confronted by earthly things, "We speak that we do know." This enables such children to obtain an education of the most practical character.
Human life appears to be mainly the pursuit of happiness. Those who seek it in wrong-doing have no right to find it; and they find none that lasts. Those who seek happiness in right-doing are entitled to find it; and they do find it when they know how to do right. The amount of happiness that enters one's life depends much on one's estimate of joy. It depends also on his philosophy toward that which threatens his happiness. These depend chiefly on his understanding of reality; and this is given by Christian Science. As this understanding deepens and widens with the third and fourth generations, error will have fewer witnesses, and it will be progressively easier to be overcome "until," as Mrs. Eddy writes on page 67 of "Retrospection and Introspection," "the false claim called sin is finally lost for lack of witness."
This scientific prophecy hints at the meaning of a statement which occurs between the second and third commandments of the Decalogue, "For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me." Finding these words along with the Ten Commandments, adults as well as children wonder what they can mean; for no one who has not been taught to do so will believe that divine Love can make one person suffer for the sins of another. Christian Scientists accept the Ten Commandments and they do not ignore these words, but they interpret them consistently with the true idea of God as revealed throughout the Scriptures, especially in the New Testament.
In human experience it does seem that an individual may suffer without any fault on his part. What is responsible for this? The only enmity against God and the only adversary to the human race—the only devil or evil—is the false claim and false thoughts that Paul referred to as the carnal mind or the mind of the flesh. Mrs. Eddy has defined the same error as mortal mind or animal magnetism. She says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 103): "It is the false belief that mind is in matter, and is both evil and good; that evil is as real as good and more powerful." Now this unreal mind is composed of all the false or bad or material thoughts in the world; and when nobody can be deceived into such a thought there will be no mortal mind. When that time comes everybody will be in the mental state that is spoken of in the Bible as heaven, or the kingdom of God. Of this condition of thought Jesus said, "It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." God gives us His kingdom or consciousness by giving us good thoughts, and in so far as we receive or accept these true thoughts we are saved from sin, disease, and death. Any individual is in heaven or harmony whose thoughts are purely spiritual. When a person's every thought is a true thought, is from the divine Mind, he will be one with God as Jesus was; his individuality will be "born of the Spirit;" and we need to remember Jesus' prayer for all, "that they may be one, even as we are one."
Then why does any one have a single bad thought? Especially why do material or sinful thoughts enter the consciousness of one who wants to be spiritually-minded? Paul said, "We are members one of another." It would be easier to be spiritually-minded if other people were. The aggregate of unspiritual thoughts forms our temptation; it constitutes evil or mortal mind; and it is in this way that the iniquity of one person or generation is visited on another. Nevertheless, unspiritual thoughts are not true nor real thoughts, and the understanding and practice of Christian Science enables its students to detect and exclude or expel them, with their evil consequences. This is the way of salvation from all evil, not only for individuals but for the human race; and by her discovery of it Mrs. Eddy has rendered a greater service to mankind than any one except the Master whose faithful follower she is.
From this explanation of the words attributed to Moses, it follows that we need to watch our thoughts, not only for our own benefit but for the sake of the whole world. By admitting and harboring none but right thoughts, we shall not only do right ourselves but we shall help everybody else who is not beyond temptation. This is doubtless what Paul meant when he said it was our "reasonable service" to make ourselves "holy, acceptable unto God."
The eighteenth chapter of the book of the prophet Ezekiel shows that he perceived, long before Christ Jesus came to teach the true concept of God, that it was not God who visited the iniquity of fathers upon the sons. Ezekiel declared the divine law to be this: "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. ... In his righteousness that he hath done he shall live." As the Bible must be read as a whole, this statement by Ezekiel and the statement attributed to Moses must be read together, and both must be interpreted in the light of the fact that God is Love, the divine Principle which, as Mrs. Eddy has written on page 140 of Science and Health, "causeth no evil, disease, nor death."
