The name science points at once to knowledge substantiated...

Marie C. Hartman, Committee on Publication for Holland,

Eenheid,

The name science points at once to knowledge substantiated by proof, to something above supposition, to something expressing the highest truth which man knows about a certain subject. And why should it be wrong to know God, divine Principle, the one great cause, in this way, when Jesus said that to know God is Life eternal? To know and to understand God is not merely an intellectual attainment. Mrs. Eddy knew, as did Paul, that the things pertaining to God are spiritually discerned, that not the human intellect but spiritual understanding—love of and obedience to the Father—leads man to God, who is absolute Truth. Christian Science does not rob man of his faith, but it deepens it by teaching him how to rely on his faith in God under all circumstances, and to make his life the demonstration of his faith. An English schoolboy was once asked, What is faith? He answered, Faith is believing what you know is not true. Such believing, of course, cannot be a support and rule of conduct in one's life; but when faith relies on what we do know to be true, it becomes holier in the measure that the knowing grows surer and purer.

Christian Science teaches its followers to love and obey God with all the heart, mind, and strength, and thus to keep the First Commandment "in spirit and in truth." Christian Scientists are so conscious of the great help and support that this teaching gives through its right concept of God, and of its saving and redeeming power, that they are assured that the Comforter, the spirit of Truth, of which Jesus spoke, has found expression in Christian Science.

Christian Science teaches us how to put off "the old man" and to put on "the new man"—man created in the image of God; and this is done only by living more and more in the understanding of Spirit, instead of in the belief of matter, thus letting God's kingdom be more manifest in us each day. Healing in Christian Science is always a result of the giving up of wrong or sinful thoughts, and of experiencing the redeeming love of Him "who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction,"—not through death, but through His law of perfection.

Christian Science does not say that mortals do not appear to experience evil, sin, death, judgment, hell; but it does maintain that these are not included in the creation of God, and therefore that they do not belong to the eternal, unchanging facts of being. Christian Science emphasizes the fact that departure from God and obedience to evil beliefs necessarily lead to suffering and sorrow, and that as long as man sins he will bear the punishment thereof. Mrs. Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 19), "Every pang of repentance and suffering, every effort for reform, every good thought and deed, will help us to understand Jesus' atonement for sin and aid its efficacy; but if the sinner continues to pray and repent, sin and be sorry, he has little part in the atonement,—in the at-one-ment with God,—for he lacks the practical repentance, which reforms the heart and enables man to do the will of wisdom."

Sin is the result of the belief that man can find happiness or satisfaction in other ways than through obedience to God, good; and because this is a moral impossibility, any thought leading to sin is a form of ignorance of the spiritual law of cause and effect, or of the holiness of God. Sin is no more a creation or expression of Him who "saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good" than a mistake in a mathematical problem is an expression of mathematics. Following Christ Jesus, our Way-shower and Savior, as nearly as we can in his demonstration of man's unity with God, is to accept the atonement, is to experience God's forgiveness, which includes the destruction of sin and of its consequence, sickness. Would not, however, the acknowledgment of the reality of God's redeeming love be far more desirable? It is this redeeming Love which lifts man out of sin, sickness, and suffering by awakening him from the Adam-dream, the dream of material existence, and makes him conscious of the fact that his real being is the reflection of the Father who created His child, His image and likeness, superior to evil.

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