Article April 19, 1952 Issue

"THE WAY TO EXTRACT ERROR"

DOUGLAS ROBERTS

Students of Christian Science know that spiritual progress requires not only a hungering and thirsting after righteousness, but also an equal zeal in the extraction of error. This statement is emphasized by our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" where she writes (p. 201): "We cannot build safely on false foundations. Truth makes a new creature, in whom old things pass away and 'all things are become new.' Passions, selfishness, false appetites, hatred, fear, all sensuality, yield to spirituality, and the superabundance of being is on the side of God, good." A few lines farther on she adds: "The way to extract error from mortal mind is to pour in truth through flood-tides of Love. Christian perfection is won on no other basis."

Overcoming error, then, does not entail a negative striving against evil on its own ground of seeming reality, attempting to meet error with error. But it does entail a positive acceptance of the truth that destroys error, the truth of God's allness and error's nothingness. Only truth can dispel error, even as light alone can dispel darkness. This truth, revealed through Christian Science, enters the childlike, receptive thought through humility, purity, sincerity, compassion, and love.

Mortal mind may seem to resist this purifying process of truth's entrance into consciousness, and mental disturbance or chemicalization may follow. As we continue, however, to pour in truth, the "flood-tides of Love" will neutralize error, destroying the illusions of fear, disease, and sin, which blind mortals to man's true nature. Healing then results. Our Leader writes (ibid., pp. 322,323): "It is easier to desire Truth than to rid one's self of error. Mortals may seek the understanding of Christian Science, but they will not be able to glean from Christian Science the facts of being without striving for them. This strife consists in the endeavor to forsake error of every kind and to possess no other consciousness but good."

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