Editorial September 28, 1929 Issue

"The fact concerning error"

Albert F. Gilmore

In emphasizing the need for students of Christian Science to know the unreality of evil, of every phase of error, Mrs. Eddy makes a most significant statement on page 92 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." "Until the fact concerning error—namely, its nothingness—appears," she writes, "the moral demand will not be met, and the ability to make nothing of error will be wanting." Here our Leader places squarely before us the positive necessity of confronting the claims of error with a full knowledge of its nothingness, its utter unreality. Unless we do this we fail to meet the moral demands of Christian Science. And it is evident that the ability to know the nothingness of evil is enhanced only through meeting the moral demands. To determine what the moral demands are and, when this is learned, to meet them is the necessity for the student who would advance in the gaining of spiritual truth. And spiritual truth, knowledge of God and man, is the way to salvation.

What, then, are moral demands? Moral, as the word is commonly used, calls for discrimination between right and wrong, and adherence to the right. Now, right in the light of Christian metaphysics signifies that which is true, is real and permanent, and belongs to God's kingdom; and wrong, to follow this reasoning, the opposite to right, pertains to the unreal, that which has no existence outside of material belief. The moral demands, then, are the obligations which fall upon all who seek to progress spiritually to hold to Truth as the only reality, and, conversely, to deny as unreal all that is unlike Truth. This method meets the moral demand and, if followed, the nothingness of all error will be recognized and proved by eliminating it from consciousness, the process which destroys the effects of error.

Now, as Christian Scientists we know this, but often it seems this knowledge is theoretical rather than practical. Do we really know that error, evil, is unreal until we prove it? Proof is the thing! For when the temptation confronts us to grant some degree of reality to evil, we make our case only as we prove our understanding of the nothingness of error through its destruction. Our need is to stand firm, denying all reality to everything unlike good, to every phase of belief which does not emanate from the divine. This attitude held to unflinchingly shuts the door against the erroneous beliefs which would enter consciousness, and which, once admitted as reality, would thereby gain the semblance of truth.

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