Article February 7, 1959 Issue

DISSOLVING "THE ADAMANT OF ERROR"

ARVA M. KNOWLES

Probably many of us have been involved in a group of undesirable mortal characteristics with which we would rather not have been identified. This group could be called the "self" family. Perhaps selfishness could be named the head of the household. There is a long list of progeny. Mary Baker Eddy mentions several, such as self-aggrandizement, self-seeking, self-love, self-condemnation, self-assertion, self-justification, self-will, self-righteousness; and we might add another well-known member, self-pity.

Three of these characteristics Mrs. Eddy calls specifically "the adamant of error." In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" she writes (p. 242): "Self-love is more opaque than a solid body. In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error,—self-will, self-justification, and self-love,—which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin and death."

Surely, all the "self" family can be dissolved "with the universal solvent of Love." The false sense of self which these characteristics represent rises from the notion of an Adam-race of mortals, born into matter, struggling a human lifetime with, for, or against matter, then dying out of matter.

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