Article April 15, 1911 Issue

Christian Science says that there is one first cause, or...

Capt. Geoffrey Wilkinson

Telford (Eng.) Recorder

Christian Science says that there is one first cause, or Principle, of all that really is, and that this first cause is infinite intelligence or Mind; in other words, Spirit, God. Perfect Mind expresses itself in perfect ideas, and thus creation is spiritual, ideal, harmonious in every detail. Matter, that which is apparent to the senses, is the negation of this, and is therefore a false, imperfect sense of God's spiritual, perfect creation, which, whatever the senses may testify, is still "at hand." Material objects are counterfeits of spiritual ideas, much as the distorted landscape seen through a bad pane of glass is a counterfeit of the landscape which it parodies. Finally, a sick, sinning, and dying mortal is nothing but a false, imperfect, finite sense of God's spiritual, perfect man, made in His image and likeness.

From the above short summary of the teaching of Christian Science, it will be seen that neither will-power nor the refusal to think about sin, sickness, and death can be expected to destroy these beliefs. What alone can destroy them is the knowledge of the truth about them, namely, that they are no part of God's perfect creation, and are therefore without any real origin or existence. Jesus of Nazareth, who said he had not come to destroy God's law, but rather to fulfil it, proved that these phenomena were not according to God's law by destroying them; and it was his understanding of the spiritual law which enabled him to say, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free," for the realization of God's law is the enforcement of God's law. It was, moreover, Jesus' understanding of the spiritual law, the law of "the spirit that quickeneth," which enabled him to overcome death, and it is on his overcoming of death, on his demonstration of the continuity of life, that Christian Science prefers to lay the greater emphasis.

From what has been said above, it will be understood that Christian Science classes sin as unreal, inasmuch as it is no part of God's perfect creation, the only creation there is; and it is the object of Christian Science to reveal to mortals the truth about God and man, so that their lives may conform, both in thought and deed, to this perfect model. The understanding of what God is, and what man in His image and likeness must be, is an ever-present rebuke to every species of wrong thinking, and Christian Scientists are helped in the overcoming of sin by the understanding that God, good, the the only real intelligence and power; hence evil has no activity, no dominion, at all. After all, the value of a teaching is seen in its results, and those who have gained some understanding of Christian Science have found that what are commonly known as grave moral disorders, escape from which seemed impossible so long as evil was held to be both real and powerful, have yielded to the realization of the scientific unreality of evil.

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