The Revelator tells us of "a new heaven and a new earth" (Rev. 21:1), in which there is no sorrow or pain and in which the former things—the errors which often seem troublesome in human experience —are no longer present. According to the teachings of Christian Science, this new heaven and earth are here now. There is no need to wait until some future time to enjoy them, for they are to be found in our own spiritualized consciousness.

In the steps leading to John's final vision of the new heaven and the new earth, the great red dragon, the dragon of error, is cast out into the earth. The promise which specifies the blessings that we shall enjoy when we cast the dragon out of our experience is thus stated by the Revelator (21:7): "He that overcometh shall inherit all things."

Neither the Bible nor the writings of Mary Baker Eddy teach that error should be ignored. It must, rather, be overcome. But in our conquest over error we do not treat it as if it were real. Error is, as its name implies, a falsity, a wrong, a nothingness. Our contest with error is fought from the premise that it has no legitimacy, although it seems to sense to be real. The sense of evil's reality is corrected through reason and spiritualization of thought.

In spiritualization of thought one needs to acknowledge God, good, as the primal and only genuine cause and creator. God, good, is expressed in that which is Godlike alone. God could no more create or express error than the sun could send forth darkness. That which is expressive of good is necessarily good. God made man. And according to Genesis, everything that God made was declared by Him to be good.

Where, then, in God's creation is evil? It does not exist in the new heaven and new earth, that is, in the consciousness of good, which is the true substance of man and all creation.

Error is the opposite of good. It is but a denial of Truth. Error has not and never can touch one's true selfhood. As one awakens to that fact, his human life becomes more harmonious. Improvement will continue to bless his experience in the measure of his understanding of present perfect being and of his denial of error.

In daily affairs mortals are seemingly bombarded by evil, silent or audible, from every angle. That erroneous suggestions of sin, hate, disease, contagion, and death are expressed about him does not bother the alert Christian Scientist. He is trained to take error's jibes into instant account and to reject them as nothingness. He does not ignore them. Neither does he fear or wallow in them.

In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 563): "We may well be astonished at sin, sickness, and death. We may well be perplexed at human fear; and still more astounded at hatred, which lifts its hydra head, showing its horns in the many inventions of evil. But why should we stand aghast at nothingness?"

On the strong premise of the nothingness of sin, disease, and death we go forward toward their complete elimination. In this destruction of error, we have the Christ, Truth, the perfect spiritual ideal of God, as our guide. Truth operating in thought brings into demonstration the fact that error has no place there. The consciousness of health destroys the nothingness called sickness. The consciousness of purity casts out sin and its sequence—disease and death.

Error's devices, which are wholly mental and never spiritual or real, need to be known and superseded by the Christ, Truth, which must be welcomed in. Mrs. Eddy says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 109), "Even a mild mistake must be seen as a mistake, in order to be corrected; how much more, then, should one's sins be seen and repented of, before they can be reduced to their native nothingness!"

As long as one believes error to be true, it will be so to him, and he will suffer the consequences of his ignorance of error. But he can at any moment turn to God for help. In doing so, he must forsake the unreal sense that has held him in bondage and follow that which is good. He need not fear to leave error behind, for it has no power nor intelligence of its own to torment one who has abandoned it for heaven and its harmonies.

We need to be selective in what we admit into consciousness. This we can do without fear of any harm from the utterance of error. We need not and should not run away from error. We should see its nothingness, remove its mask of respectability, and relegate it to its own native oblivion. It is evident that the numerical value of a large zero is no more than that of a small zero. And a series of zeros, no matter how their sizes may vary, always adds up to zero. But one who gives value to nothingness needs to be jarred awake to the falsity of that assumption.

Christ Jesus did not ignore error, or evil. He cast it out. He did not honor it with reality; neither should we. "The Christian Scientist," says Mrs. Eddy (Science and Health, p. 450), "has enlisted to lessen evil, disease, and death; and he will overcome them by understanding their nothingness and the allness of God, or good."

John J. Selover