Article December 23, 1939 Issue

"The exterminator of error"

NELLIE B. MACE

CHRISTIAN SCIENTISTS habitually declare that God is the only Mind. The fact that this is being done today is in itself one form of proof that the truth endures, for this declaration is a continuation of the affirmation of God's presence and power begun in earliest Biblical statements and reiterated throughout the sacred pages. The supremacy of Mind is indicated variously and abundantly by Scriptural writers, the Psalmist, for instance, declaring of God, "His understanding is infinite;" and infinite understanding precludes the possibility of any intelligence besides the divine infinitude. The oneness of divine Mind is being widely accepted today as basic, unalterable, and demonstrable.

However, one who is not conversant with the Bible or with Christian Science may ask, How do you know there is but one Mind; how can this assertion be proved true? The question is a reasonable one; it is one that Christian Scientists in their thinking and living must constantly answer for themselves and others. The physical senses cannot help us. They can give no proof of God. Indeed, many of the secrets of material things they cannot fathom, and others they can recognize only through observation of certain effects. How much less, then, can they know God as infinite Mind, expressed only in divine ideas!

The only way we can know God is by recognizing that which manifests His nature, that which is expressive of divine Principle. And in recognizing His ideas, and accepting and utilizing them, we at the same time feel the effects of this divine influence upon our consciousness and in our experience. We find that knowing God as Mind begins to lessen our belief in an opposite so-called mind in matter; and we see the errors of this false sense and their effects gradually disappearing. Desiring to rid ourselves of the evils of mortal existence, we turn to God and claim the proof that He is infinite Mind, and that His man is ever expressing Him. Then we learn that, as Mary Baker Eddy teaches (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 469), "The exterminator of error is the great truth that God, good, is the only Mind, and that the supposititious opposite of infinite Mind—called devil or evil—is not Mind, is not Truth, but error, without intelligence or reality."