Article July 22, 1944 Issue

"He that is without sin"

ANNIE M. BARTHOLOMEW

While studying the Lesson-Sermon in the Christian Science Quarterly on the subject of "Everlasting Punishment," a student found herself agreeing heartily with such passages from the Bible as, "The wicked is snared in the work of his own hands," and the correlative readings from "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy (p. 6): "We cannot escape the penalty due for sin." "Every supposed pleasure in sin will furnish more than its equivalent of pain, until belief in material life and sin is destroyed."

Yes, thought the student, that is quite right; sin must be punished. And then came these astonishingly self-righteous thoughts: But of course this does not really refer to me. I have no pleasure in sin; certainly there are countless small errors to be eradicated, but the only thing that might be referred to as real or deliberate sin is perhaps criticism—righteous criticism, of course!—which gives me no pleasure. Just here came "a still small voice": Doesn't it? The student began to ponder: Well, if criticism gives you no pleasure, does it give you any pain? Again the student searched her thought, and eventually had to make the reluctant admission that if criticism gave no pleasure, it did give some satisfaction, otherwise it would not be voiced.

The subtlety of mortal mind— how it would condemn others for what it is pleased to call real sin, while seeking to remain comparatively spotless itself because it believes that what it considers small errors might come under the heading of venial or more pardonable ones! Yet Mrs. Eddy writes very strongly on this point on page 296 of our textbook, "Mortal belief must lose all satisfaction in error and sin in order to part with them."

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