Article April 30, 1955 Issue

"THE EXTERMINATOR OF ERROR"

KATHERINE S. WHITNEY

Mary Baker Eddy was radical and firm in her denunciation of evil. She was never neutral in her attitude toward good and evil. She always took a positive stand for Truth. She shows this in her writings. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" our Leader writes (p. 469), "The exterminator of error is the great truth that God, good, is the only Mind, and that the supposititious opposite of infinite Mind—called devil or evil—is not Mind, is not Truth, but error, without intelligence or reality." The emphatic and colorful word exterminate means to destroy utterly, to extirpate, to annihilate and root out intentionally.

How eager we are to exterminate suffering and fear! Christian Science shows us the way to banish utterly and to destroy error through the understanding of the allness of God, good. To good there is no evil. In the words quoted earlier, "the great truth that God, good, is the only Mind," added emphasis is given by the italicized "only." "Only" means exclusive of all else. If we acknowledge only one Mind, and that Mind good, or God, the one supreme infinite intelligence, we are keeping the First Commandment in spirit and in truth.

Most people in the world believe in a good God. What is needed is an understanding of the wholly good God as Jesus understood Him. He knew good as complete and all-pervading. The Master saw that there is no good except that which is derived from God. He knew that no one could really be anything of himself, either good or bad, intelligent or unintelligent, since God determines the nature of all. Man as the image and likeness of God expresses the infinite good. Man is not that all-pervading source of good. Therefore he cannot change or turn back the outpouring of good, which has its source in God.

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