Article September 24, 1927 Issue

Final Limits of Error

ETHEL COLWELL SMITH

The Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," and the other writings of Mrs. Eddy are replete with sentences containing truths which are continually bringing healing to students of Christian Science. As we study faithfully and diligently, these sentences become illumined to the waiting thought; and the awakened understanding brings peace and salvation. Every student has had this experience with such sentences; and each time he finds himself a step nearer the goal set for us by Christ Jesus, and his heart is filled with gratitude to our revered Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, for the revelation of Christian Science. One such sentence is to be found on page 476 of Science and Health. It is short and concise, but so full of healing as to be worth the attention of everyone: "Error, urged to its final limits, is self-destroyed." How many times the personal element enters into our daily problems of dealing with error, and human sense becomes weary with its efforts to destroy something! We often feel as if error were a tangible thing with which we must wrestle, or against which we must make long and forceful arguments. Becoming involved in these arguments, we seem helpless and discouraged, because we believe we are contending with something which may prove too much for us. But let us look at the wonderful sentence, "Error, urged to its final limits, is self-destroyed." Error "self-destroyed"! We do not have to destroy anything, then; error destroys itself. What a relief!

But there is something for us to do, for "error, urged to its final limits, is self-destroyed." Our part, then, is to urge error "to its final limits." But the question arises, What are the final limits of error? Surely the final limits of error must be entirely outside of the consciousness of good. And when our consciousness is completely filled with the truth about God and man, His image, error is not to be found therein. In proportion, then, as we see God and man aright, thus taking our neighbor into the kingdom of God along with us, to that extent does error recede from us.

So with the strain removed, the strain of having to destroy an adversary, the urging of error to its final limits becomes a simple process. It becomes a process of bringing into thought gratitude, love, confidence, with the result that resentment, hate, and fear are removed from our experience. We realize with humility that all these loving thoughts crowd error out of our consciousness, whereupon error disappears, not because we destroyed it, but because, being unreal, it vanished when we replaced it with Truth and thus ceased to cherish it or fear it as real.

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