Editorial March 8, 1952 Issue

"AWAKE TO RIGHTEOUSNESS, AND SIN NOT"

Richard J. Davis

On pages 475 and 476 of her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy makes this inspiring and positive statement: "Man is incapable of sin, sickness, and death. The real man cannot depart from holiness, nor can God, by whom man is evolved, engender the capacity or freedom to sin. A mortal sinner is not God's man. Mortals are the counterfeits of immortals. They are the children of the wicked one, or the one evil, which declares that man begins in dust or as a material embryo. In divine Science, God and the real man are inseparable as divine Principle and idea."

In view of this scientific statement we can understand why Mrs. Eddy saw the wisdom of selecting as one of the Lesson-Sermons in the Christian Science Quarterly to be read in our church services the subject "Everlasting Punishment." This lesson specifically corrects false theological concepts regarding God and the nature of sin and its punishment. Christian Science presents a clear explication of sin and penalty. Through spiritual revelation and intelligent reason it may be seen that scientifically there cannot possibly be such a thing as everlasting punishment, but that sin, sinner, and penalty are in a certain sense all one—mortal mind and its externalization —and that they exist only in the Adam-dream; in fact, they comprise the Adam-dream, which fades into nothingness proportionably as one understands and demonstrates the consciousness of perfect spiritual being.

All beliefs of sin are bound up or connected with various forms of taboos, fears, and superstitions inherent in mortal consciousness. They are ages old and have influenced human thought and action over the years. Linked with these beliefs is the deep-rooted claim that there is pleasure in matter, a false claim that human beings are not always willing to face and prove unreal. And yet this is the great necessity.

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