Editorial October 26, 1912 Issue

HANDLING THE SERPENT

John B. Willis

No word spoken by the Master expresses a more inspiring thought, or embraces a greater prophecy and privilege for men, than his familiar saying, "Ye shall know the truth." It speaks for humanity's highest innate capacity, for divinely provided opportunity, and for that supremest achievement, the gain of spiritual freedom, man's inherited estate and possession, dignity and happiness.

From the metaphsical point of view it is apparent that we can know nothing but the truth, since falsity cannot be a matter of knowledge but only of belief. To the Christian Scientist it has become equally clear that man does not need to know anything save the truth; that the so-called knowledge of evil is not essential to good or to any of its manifestations. The contrary belief in the necessity of evil in the best universe God could create, involves the contradiction that evil is a necessity to good; that error is not only the associate of Truth, but essential to our perception of Truth! Such an assumption brings chaos to Christian thought, not only because it denies the rule of the law that like begets like, but because it is opposed to the most emphatic teaching of Scripture that we are not to know evil, since it is "an abomination unto the Lord."

While the unprofitableness of evil, its entire absence from God's kingdom, and the consequent sin of any consent to or fellowship with it, has been made manifest to all Christian Scientists, they have also been led to understand and appreciate the ministry of Truth in making known to them the hall-marks of evil, the falsity of its innumerable claims before the tribunal of an awakening sense. Error rules the ignorant without begetting protest, because it is an unperceived influence or predisposition; but in inquiring thought error's claims are brought to light, and their falsity must be proven in order to escape their rule. To intelligence stupidity is unknown, the divine idea has no touch with untruth; but in the arena of human sense error appears in the garb of Truth, and its nakedness must therefore be exposed. Of this Mrs. Eddy has repeatedly spoken. She says: "Ignorance must be seen and corrected before we can attain harmony." "To prove scientifically the error or unreality of sin, you must first see the claim of sin, and then destroy it" (Science and Health, pp. 251, 461).

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