Article February 27, 1915 Issue

Christian Science recognizes one Supreme Being, infinite...

Ezra W. Palmer

Greeley (Col.) Standard

Christian Science recognizes one Supreme Being, infinite God, Spirit, the great I am, as All-in-all of the universe. God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and from this fundamental conception of God flow in orderly and logical sequence all the propositions of Christian Science. The Christian Science text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," is written from this basis, and when its scientific view-point is gained, the logical unfoldment of its teachings is grasped by the unbiased thought.

Since God is infinite Spirit, His creation must be like Him, spiritual. Since He is Love, as St. John declares, His creation must be good and not evil. Christian Science therefore declares that God is not the author of evil. To affirm that God creates evil would be to clothe evil with omnipotence, and would make God responsible for all pain, sin, pestilence, disease, and death with which mortals suffer. It would be useless to resist evil, since in so doing mortals would be fighting against God. Christian Science makes clear that only God and His creation have reality, since they alone have immortality, immutability, enduring substance. Evil is not real, because not a part of the kingdom of God. Jesus defined evil as "a liar, and the father of it," and this is the teaching of Christian Science. Evil obtains in mortal thought only. Mrs. Eddy says, "The corporeal senses are the only source of evil or error" (Science and Health, p. 489), and from this source flow all the ills of humanity.

Jesus, knowing the immanence of Spirit and the lie of evil, destroyed by the power of God all forms of evil, sin, sickness, and death. He furthermore taught his disciples that they too could overcome these errors through the might of omnipotent God. This gift of healing was universal, since "God is no respecter of persons." All who believed, understood, Jesus' teachings could use it. "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father." Because he taught and proved the supremacy of Spirit and the finity of evil, he incurred the enmity of the blind and barren religious systems of his day. The carnal mind, the mind of the flesh, the source of all sin, is "enmity against God," and in all ages, both before and after the ascension, has persecuted and resisted the coming of spiritual understanding, which heals sickness and sin and unfolds the ever-presence of God. When Mrs. Eddy again gave to the world the spiritual import of the Scriptures which heals and saves, she found the same reception accorded to Truth as Jesus and his disciples had encountered before her. Christian Scientists likewise have found that courage is required to voice the truth of being, but the evidences of the truth of Christian Science are so convincing that they rejoice to live it, knowing that it is only a question of time when the supremacy of Spirit will be seen and acknowledge by all men.

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