Article September 1, 1934 Issue

Rejecting Error

CHARLOTTE RUTH DECKER

"Search the scriptures," said the master Christian; "for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me." These words are full of wisdom for us today, and with the aid of the "key" furnished by the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, we may learn the spiritual meaning of the Bible, which has long been greatly obscured by the inconsistencies of man-made doctrines and dogmas.

In the seventh chapter of Matthew, Jesus warned his hearers against the "false prophets," the guises which evil would assume in order to lure them from the right way. Showing the impossibility of adulterating good with evil, he said that many would falsely claim to prophesy and cast out evils and do many wonderful works in his name, and that to these insistent arguments should be given the quick and decisive answer, "I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity."

Mortal mind constantly tries to make us believe that evil is good, and that good is evil. Let an apparently pleasurable, material course appear in our experience, and immediately the tempter, alias material sense, enters all sorts of arguments, claiming its exact likeness to the true path leading upward, asserting that it is even a better way, because it is easier and more pleasurable. We have, however, a test by which we may try these thoughts. We read on page 462 of our textbook: "Are thoughts divine or human? That is the important question;" and again (p. 492), "For right reasoning there should be but one fact before the thought, namely, spiritual existence." Do not these words point out the true course? No path based on any other premise leads upward, and no bypath implying a mixture of Spirit and matter, though seemingly parallel to the one marked "radical reliance on Truth" (Science and Health, p. 167), will lead to the understanding and realization of our real existence as a child of God, our heritage of perfect harmony.