"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Thus in the simple, clear, and decisive language of the Bible is declared the great fact of creation on which the words and works of Christ Jesus and the Science of his Christianity are based: one God, who is good; one creation, the effect of that good; pure Mind, and its pure and perfect ideas.

Later in the book of Genesis we are told of a mythical creation which appeared as the result of belief in a power divided against itself, an impossible copartnership between good and evil; that which in time came to be called mind and matter. From this suppositional partnership have arisen all the perplexities, ills, warfare, sin, disease, and death which largely constitute the experience of mankind —what is sometimes called the "riddle of the universe." Nothing can answer this riddle, or heal the ills resulting from this mythical partnership, but the wisdom and love of the divine Mind. This Mind has no partner, but is the one infinite God, including within Himself His own infinite creation. In this creation there is neither discord nor co-operation between Spirit and matter, good and evil. Duality, with all its idolatrous claims, its arrogance and weaknesses, is unknown.

On page 361 of "Miscellaneous Writings" Mary Baker Eddy says, "God, the only substance and divine Principle of creation, is by no means a creative partner in the firm of error, named matter, or mortal mind." And on page 274 of the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," she says: "The conventional firm, called matter and mind, God never formed;" and later, "This suppositional partnership is already obsolete, for matter, examined in the light of divine metaphysics, disappears." The word "obsolete" is defined as "out of date, outworn, effaced; "so" in the light of divine metaphysics" the suppositional evils of the carnal mind become "out of date, outworn, effaced."

In this light divine one may claim for himself the reflected purity of Spirit and its pure, substantial ideas, and find himself free from any partnership with sin, its seeming allurements and punishments. For one there may seem to be a partnership between health and sickness. In the light of divine metaphysics he sees this suppositional partnership dissolved, and the radiant wholeness of Spirit established as his true being, never in any way allied to the mixed beliefs of the human mind. This admonition is given by St. Paul to the Corinthians: "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial?" What concord indeed hath Life with either the birth or the death of matter? Such a partnership is impossible, and its seeming partnership utterly mythical. Love has no concord, no communion, with fear or hate. Strength has no partnership with weakness or weariness, success with failure, or abundance with poverty. Good has no opposite in the infinite realm of reality.

"I am the Lord: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images." This statement of the oneness of Mind and its undivided power was proved to a Christian Science practitioner one night while working for a young child who seemed to be suffering from a severe form of what was called grippe. There appeared to be a divided mind in that household, the mother of the child being a Christian Scientist and the father a believer in materia medica. A call had come from the mother saying the child, a pupil in a Christian Science Sunday School, was fearful and the fever increasing because her father had said if she was not better in the morning the doctor would be called. Very decisively came to the practitioner the above-quoted message from Isaiah with its comforting assurance—of one Mind omnipotent and omnipresent, therefore the only Mind in that household. This Mind was seen as All, sharing its power with no other, needing no partnership with matter to maintain its perfect harmony. Great peace followed the assurance of this scientific fact, and early in the morning she was rejoiced to hear the bright happy voice of the child saying she was "all well."

Throughout her writings Mrs. Eddy is very definite in her statements that there is but one basis of being, and that no one can think logically or live harmoniously from the standpoint of two bases. Divine Principle being one, divine Science is based on that oneness and can have no partnership with its opposite, matter. This mythical partnership is indeed becoming obsolete, and out of date. Can we let our thinking be out of date?

On page 260 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," Mrs. Eddy says: "Science is divine; it hath no partnership with human means and ends, no half-way stations. Nothing conditional or material belongs to it." What vistas of perfection open to our gaze as we live the rules of this divine Science. The suppositional partnership of Spirit and matter becomes obsolete to us, outworn and effaced. As we thus acknowledge, rejoice, and find our complete being in the one divine Mind, we daily experience the beauty and strength, the harmony and dominion, of that Mind, and can say with the wise king of Israel, "But now the Lord my God hath given me rest on every side, so that there is neither adversary nor evil occurrent."

Margaret Morrison