Article December 22, 1923 Issue

It has been said that "knowledge is the wing wherewith...

Brigman C. Odom, Committee on Publication for the State of Texas,

Eastland Daily Oil Belt News

It has been said that "knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven." Paul said, "The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life." "Knowledge" and "the gift" here mean truth, enlightenment. This truth, this enlightenment, or light, is Christian Science; and it is "the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." Christian Science heals the sick; it does not merely claim to do so. Christian Science reforms the sinner and keeps him reformed, because it reveals God to him. It helps one to overcome discouragement—the greatest foe to one's health, success, and happiness. "The wages of sin" are identical with sickness, pain, and death. Jesus destroyed these errors through the Word; that is, with the truth—the truth that God is Life, the one universal cause, the only creator. Jesus' method was therefore mental: it was spiritual. He knew that all activity originates in divine Mind; and he knew that right thinking confers harmony, health, and normal activity.

The teacher and his pupils in mathematics illustrate the work of the Christian Scientist. The teacher knows his subject, and can demonstrate his knowledge of it. The pupils find many problems they cannot solve. This inability to obtain the correct answer is due to their ignorance of the rules involved in the solution of the problems. This ignorance is not reality, it is illusion; for when the truth about the error which confuses and disturbs the pupils is known and applied, the correct answer is found, and the ignorance, or error, or illusion, is gone. In fact, it never had any existence except as a false belief. In like manner the Christian Scientist knows the truth about God and His creation. He knows that God is infinite good, the only cause and creator; and he knows that all that God made (and He made all that was made) is good and perfect like Himself. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." But God, Spirit, is everywhere; hence the remedy of the Christian Scientist for the suggestions of evil—fear, pain, sickness, sin, death—that may come to him, is at hand; and this remedy is the truth, even the truth to which Jesus referred when he said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." "Christian Science brings to light Truth and its supremacy, universal harmony, the entireness of God, good, and the nothingness of evil," Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 293). Christian Science does not deny the seeming reality of pain, sin, sickness, death, envy, resentment, or hate. It explains that these are only sense phenomena. Indeed, all forms of error may seem real at times, even to the Christian Scientist. However, Christian Science denies that pain, sin,—evil,—are God-created; for "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." Mrs. Eddy says (Science and Health, p. 472): "Sickness, sin, and death, being inharmonious, do not originate in God nor belong to His government. His law, rightly understood, destroys them."

The atonement is the way pointed out by Jesus for man's salvation, and it includes what he taught and demonstrated about God. Its efficacy is not in the suffering and the crucifixion of Jesus, but in his resurrection—his triumph over sin and death. The real work of the atonement establishes the oneness between God and man; in other words, it reconciles man to God.

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