Article December 28, 1946 Issue

Separation from Error

MICHAEL ST. JOHN O'CARROLL

Ever since the days of the garden of Eden mankind has tried to combine good and evil in its sense of life and to find pleasure, success, and health therein. But because it has tried to make two such opposites its basis of experience, the pleasure it has sought and sometimes obtained has not been unaccompanied by pain, and its success and health have often been attended by failure and disease. Because of such a mistaken basis mankind has found that, instead of enjoying the dominion bestowed upon God's image, it has been subjected to the whims of mortal mind, to all that is included in the material sense of existence.

Have not some of us, when undergoing a trying experience, expressed the wish, "If only it were a bad dream, and we could wake up from it and find the oppressive conditions unreal"? Great is the Christian Scientist's joy when he begins to awaken from the dream of material sense to his God-given dominion! He begins to experience the truth of Mary Baker Eddy's statement in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 14), "Entirely separate from the belief and dream of material living, is the Life divine, revealing spiritual understanding and the consciousness of man's dominion over the whole earth."

As he increasingly exercises his God-given ability to separate himself from every limiting claim of material existence, he finds his own forever unity with Life, Truth, and Love. Recognizing man as the image or idea of infinite Life, he sees his true selfhood as entirely separate from and above the dream of material existence, with its war, disease, depression, disaster. Spiritual existence becomes reality to him, and he rejoices in man's inseparability from Principle, Truth, and Love.

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