Article April 4, 1931 Issue

God's Presence—Error's Exclusion

EARL ALBERT RUSSELL

It is a mistake to believe that Truth can ever be absent and error present; that Love can ever give place to fear or hate; that Life can ever be supplanted by death. God's presence is the only real presence. Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 468), "All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all." There is, in reality, no such thing as a finite mind, nor are there minds many; hence there can be no real manifestations of sin, sickness, and death. The belief that there can be such is a lie. God, good, is everywhere; hence, evil is nowhere.

The presence of God is a law of exclusion to error and its falsities, and this exclusion is sin's punishment and destruction. It has always been a hard problem in theology to believe that God could punish sin without having knowledge of it. With the discovery of Christian Science by Mary Baker Eddy there arose the questions of how God could heal disease, which, according to the teachings of Christian Science, He knew nothing of; how He could destroy death if He was not aware of it. It is because God does not know so-called sin, disease, and death that, as He is reflected, they are destroyed—banished from human thought. Their presence excluded from thought, their seeming power is gone; and harmony reigns normally and naturally.

The Bible tells us that "the wages of sin is death." Note, "the wages of sin" is death—death of the sin, not of man! God's presence is death to sin and its wages, in that sin is displaced and excluded from thought because unknown to divine Mind. In the broadest sense, anything not of God is sin, and God's presence realized destroys it in human consciousness. The Psalmist said, "The entrance of thy words giveth light." Well could he have said that the consciousness of God's presence excludes evil of every nature.

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