Editorial September 24, 1938 Issue

The Awakening

George Shaw Cook

On page 230 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy writes as follows: "If sickness is real, it belongs to immortality; if true, it is a part of Truth." She continues, in the same paragraph, "But if sickness and sin are illusions, the awakening from this mortal dream, or illusion, will bring us into health, holiness, and immortality."

Students of Christian Science are, as a rule, quite willing to see sin and suffering as an illusion, as a dream from which they need to be awakened, but they are not always quite so willing, or able, to see all that pertains to what is called mortal existence as an illusion, or dream. They are sometimes inclined to the belief that the relatively pleasant phases of mortal existence are real, while the unpleasant, discordant experiences are illusory. However, Mrs. Eddy says (ibid., p. 250), "Mortal existence is a dream; mortal existence has no real entity, but saith 'It is I.'" And on the same page she says: "Now I ask, Is there any more reality in the waking dream of mortal existence than in the sleeping dream? There cannot be, since whatever appears to be a mortal man is a mortal dream."

The teaching of Christian Science is, then, that all that appears to be a mortal man, subject, in belief, to birth, maturity, decay, death, is a part of the so-called Adam-dream of existence, and has not any actual or divine reality. Nothing which seems to be a part of the mortal or dream existence, however relatively good it may appear to be, is real or has any place in absolute or divine reality. Although at times seeming to denote human progress and to manifest a greater degree of harmony, it is never anything more than an improved belief.

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