"The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." So declares the writer to the Hebrews (4:12), and he adds, "All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do."

In Christian Science, eyes are understood as spiritual discernment. That which discerns is divine Mind, or God, who discerns His own immutable infinitude in endless variety of manifestation. Mind never looks outside of itself for the cause of any effect. It is itself the one and only cause and embodies its effect within its own infinitude. Mind, God, is substance; hence effect manifests the substance of Spirit and the wholesomeness of Life. Cause and effect are one, as Mind revealing its own infinitude. Nothing exists beyond or outside of the all-inclusiveness of infinity. Within the boundlessness of Love all is held in safety and well-being in the ever-lasting embrace of Life.

To erring mortal, finite sense there seems to be another mind and another realm—a mind that is mortal and a realm that is finite, a mind which claims to conceal within itself its own wicked motives and purposes, its own latent fears and inhibitions. Such a mind is a myth. It has no real existence, no veritable manifestation, no actual effect. It exists nowhere within the realm of infinity, and neither obscures nor destroys one iota of good. Truth lays bare the lying claim that aught besides God has reality, life, and power.

In Christian Science treatment the uncovering of error is an important element. This can never be accomplished, however, from the standpoint of belief in the reality of evil. The truth that "all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do" indicates the searching penetration of Truth, which dispels fear, fathoms mystery, tears the mask from hypocrisy, and pierces deception. Christian Science reveals the supernal naturalness of God's law. In her book "Unity of Good" Mary Baker Eddy makes this arresting statement (p. 2): "The true man, really saved, is ready to testify of God in the infinite penetration of Truth, and can affirm that the Mind which is good, or God, has no knowledge of sin."

If God beheld evil, if Truth knew error, evil or error would be real, hence inescapable. Truth knows nothing beyond its own reality. Thus Truth acts as a law of annihilation to error—to the whole mesmeric lie of sin, disease, and death. Only in the supposititious realm of mortal belief does evil seem to exist or have power. Neither congestion, accumulation, nor poison defiles being or defies the penetration of Truth. Truth uncovers error as nothing, never as something. Thus Truth is the Christ, the Redeemer, which lifts all condemnation, heals all wounds, and removes all scars. Christ, Truth, heals and saves by proving that in reality there is nothing to heal, nothing to save, for all that ever has existed is God and His present manifestation of good.

In "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 160): "Most of us willingly accept dead truisms which can be buried at will: but a live truth, even though it be a sapling within rich soil and with blossoms on its branches, frightens people. The trenchant truth that cuts its way through iron and sod, most men avoid until compelled to glance at it. Then they open their hearts to it for actual being, health, holiness, and immortality."

The fact that Truth is inescapable, that in very fact it does cut its way through the iron and sod of materialism, is the hope of salvation in world affairs as in individual experiences. The action of Truth is the action of divine Love, or Principle, which, in destroying sin, destroys the belief of sinner and so reveals God in the infinite glory of His self-expression and man in the beauty of Godlikeness, the very image of God. This truth over-throws despotic power and supplants the biased ideologies of human reasoning with the infallible truth that God's kingdom is come and His law is operative and actual now in human affairs, even as it is in heaven, the realm of unerring Mind.

Christian Science demonstrates with the certainty of Truth that evil, in whatever guise, has no God. Thus evil has no man to identify it, no law to sustain it, no substance to perpetuate it, no power with which to accomplish its ends. This truth is the inescapable law of annihilation to evil.

Christian Science never condones error, it never conceals it. Let him who feels it incumbent upon him to uncover error do so only from the standpoint of a clear realization that God is All. The attempt to uncover error from the standpoint of belief in its reality frustrates itself. Such an attempt lays one open to the ill effects of his own belief that error is real. Often he attributes such effects to the malpractice of another, whereas the remedy lies in destroying one's own belief in evil, never ascribing to evil subtlety, power, or reality.

The illumined realization of God's allness is the penetrating truth of spiritual discernment which searches the joints and marrow of human thinking and to which all things are naked and opened. Such realization of Truth is its own protection, for in uncovering error it never forsakes the calm conviction and certainty that "the Lord he is God; there is none else beside him" (Deut. 4:35).

Through psychoanalysis mortal mind seeks to fathom its own motives and purposes; through the X ray and other devices it seeks to penetrate its own obduracy. Pertinently does Mrs. Eddy say in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" concerning all mortally man-made theories (p. 312): "Our theories are based on finite premises, which cannot penetrate beyond matter. A personal sense of God and man's capabilities necessarily limits faith and hinders spiritual understanding." All unscientific attempt to meet evil from the standpoint of belief in the reality of evil is fatal, whereas the scientific uncovering of error is salutary. Such uncovering is constructive, not destructive, in its effect and results in the annihilation of evil.

By revealing the truth that God is divine Principle and man is the divine idea, forever one with and inseparable from Principle, Christian Science opens the way whereby the full capacity of being is discerned and demonstrated and spiritual understanding lays hold of supernal glory. In the words of the prophet it proclaims (II Chron. 16:9), "The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him."