Article August 3, 1946 Issue

Suppositional Warfare

THOMAS LOVATT WILLIAMS

"The suppositional warfare between truth and error is only the mental conflict between the evidence of the spiritual senses and the testimony of the material senses, and this warfare between the Spirit and flesh will settle all questions through faith in and the understanding of divine Love." This striking sentence appears on page 288 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy.

The conflicts pertaining to our existence are thus transferred from the apparently external material world to our own thinking, and this is the standpoint from which Christian metaphysics views them. Materialists believe this universe to be material, hence objective, subject to certain physical laws, formulated no one knows how. The metaphysician knows the universe to be the product of Mind, a compound idea, partaking of the nature and qualities of Mind. Individual man exists in this universe as spiritual idea, and the only creation of which he is conscious is the spiritual creation. According to this explanation, it is clear that the harmony or inharmony of our existence is determined by the truth we entertain or the error we believe.

God is Truth, and Truth is therefore ever harmonious, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. Man, God's idea, is the expression of Truth and always bears witness to perfection That which seems to tell of error is mortal mind, a travesty or counterfeit of divine Mind. But since mortal mind and the errors it entertains are not of Truth, they are displaceable, temporary, and powerless. The Master said (Mark 14:38), "Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation." The danger is that one may be lulled to sleep and forget the spiritual, perfect nature of Life.

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