Article July 8, 1916 Issue

Spiritual Awakening

SAMUEL GREENWOOD

In reading Science and Health one cannot fail to be impressed with the importance which Mrs. Eddy attaches to the recognition and acknowledgment that error, or evil, is unreal, as the essential correlative of the allness of God. The reason is obvious, for error cannot be overcome so long as it is believed to be true. On page 353 we read, "When we learn that error is not real, we shall be ready for progress."

While mortals are willing enough to admit that error in the abstract is not real, they are not so willing to admit its falsity in the concrete; that is, as expressed in physical man and material law, for matter to them represents the source and substance of their existence. It should be taken into account, however, that it is this so-called physical sense and nothing else through which evil claims to reach mankind, and by which it is believed to be seen and felt, a fact which absolutely separates it from God, and shows it to include and constitute all that makes human salvation necessary. The dominion of material law would leave no escape from mortality, so that Jesus' declaration, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free," points unmistakably to material sense as the enslaving error, and to the spiritual sense of being as the emancipating truth.

Again in Science and Health we read, "The history of error is a dream-narrative;" also: "The five corporeal senses cannot take cognizance of Spirit. They cannot come into His presence, and must dwell in dreamland, until mortals arrive at the understanding that material life, with all its sin, sickness, and death, is an illusion" (pp. 530, 543). Mrs. Eddy's position respecting the unreality of material sense experience is undoubtedly Scriptural, and it is proved to be scientific in the successful treatment of human ills on the basis of Christian Science. Throughout the Bible we find numerous calls to awake from the mortal dream of a life separate from God. Paul says, "It is high time to awake out of sleep;" and again he says, "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light."

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