Article May 8, 1920 Issue

Before the clarifying rays of Christian Science were observed...

The Christian Science Monitor

Before the clarifying rays of Christian Science were observed amid the chaos of human thinking, it was a traditional saying that Jesus' use of parables and figurative language made his teaching transcendental and obscure. But as the actual meanings of his words have become better understood through the light shed upon them by a study of Christian Science, it is discovered that his statements are anything but obscure.

Of all his sayings, however, there is one that is not even framed in metaphorical language, but is wholly without embellishment or symbolism, and which is yet one of the most significant utterances of the Master's anywhere recorded. It is the statement in the eighth chapter of the book of John, where, addressing the carnal mind, he says: "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it." Any one who will look squarely at this statement and take it at its face value, without attempting to read anything into it, will get a complete statement of fundamental Christianity, which is fundamental Christian Science. The word devil, of course, is but the personification of the word evil, which latter word may be substituted for it. Thus evil is declared to be a murderer from the beginning; that is to say, self-destroyed at its very inception, therefore without existence, as is inevitable with anything that abides not in the truth and has no truth in it. When evil speaketh a lie it speaketh of itself, for it is both a liar and its own origin. Could human language frame a more sweeping denunciation of evil as nonexistent?

Now, of course a lie is always a perversion of a truth. There could not be a lie about a lie, for a lie lied about, that is denied, is manifestly a restatement of the original truth. Two negatives make an affirmative in metaphysics as well as in grammar. Of course, lies can be added to lies, which is a totally different thing, but it is obvious that a lie is merely an attempted reversal of truth, and a reversal of the lie restores the truth. On page 442 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy says, "Neither animal magnetism nor hypnotism enters into the practice of Christian Science, in which truth cannot be reversed, but the reverse of error is true." And on page 218 of "Miscellaneous Writings" she says, "The visible universe declares the invisible only by reversion, as error declares Truth." The word reversion, of course, means that which reverts or returns to the original.

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