Qass 
 Book 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 
 
A. 
 
 Xi 
 
SCIENCE AND HEALTH 
 
 % 
 WITH KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES 
 
 BY MARY BAKER G. EDDY 
 
 600 pages Thirty-second Edition Carefully Revised 
 
 The standard work on Mind-Healing, including the theory 
 and practice of Christian Science. The sick are healed by 
 simply reading this book. 
 
 Price $J.oo. By mail 18 cents extra 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR 
 
 385 Commonwealth Avenue 
 
 Boston Mass. 
 
UNITY OF GOOD 
 
 AND 
 
 UNREALITY OF EVIL 
 
 BY 
 
 MARY BAKER G. EDDY 
 
 President of Massachusetts Metaphysicial College 
 
 
 FEB 24 1888 s 
 
 / 
 
 Or 
 
 BOSTON 
 PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR 
 
 571 COLUMBUS AVENUE 
 1888 
 
 
<K& 
 
 ^ ^^ 
 
 COPYRIGHTED 
 
 BY MARY BAKER G. EDDY 
 
 1887 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 LAUTION IN THE lRUTII . . 
 
 
 I 
 
 Does God know or behold sin, sickness, and death ? 
 
 I 
 
 Seedtime and Harvest 
 
 
 IO 
 
 Is anything real of which the physical senses 
 
 are 
 
 
 cognizant? ...... 
 
 
 IO 
 
 The Deep Things of God .... 
 
 
 16 
 
 Ways Higher than Our Ways 
 
 
 20 
 
 Rectifications 
 
 
 24 
 
 A Colloquy 
 
 
 26 
 
 The Ego 
 
 
 34 
 
 Living Soul 
 
 
 35 
 
 There is no Matter? 
 
 
 39 
 
 Sight ........ 
 
 
 42 
 
 Touch ....... 
 
 
 43 
 
 Taste ....... 
 
 
 43 
 
 Force . . . 
 
 
 44 
 
 Is there no Death? 
 
 
 47 
 
 Personal Statements 
 
 
 56 
 
IV 
 
 Contents. 
 
 Credo 
 
 Do you believe in God ? 
 Do you believe in Man ? 
 Do you believe in Matter ? 
 What say you of Woman ? 
 What say you of Evil? 
 
 Suffering from Others' Thoughts 
 
 The Saviour's Mission 
 
 Summary 
 
 60 
 60 
 61 
 62 
 64 
 65 
 69 
 
 74 
 80 
 
Caution in tlje (Erntl). 
 
 PERHAPS no doctrine of Christian Science 
 rouses so much natural doubt and question- 
 ing as this, that God knows no such thing 
 as sin. Indeed, this may be set down as one of the 
 "things hard to be understood," such as the Apostle 
 Peter declared were taught by his fellow-apostle 
 Paul, "which they that are unlearned and unstable 
 wrest . . . unto their own destruction" (2 Peter 
 iii. 16). 
 
 Let us then reason together on this important, 
 subject, whose statement in Christian Science may 
 justly be characterized as wonderful. 
 
 Does God know or behold sin, sickness, and death ? 
 
 The nature and character of God is so little appre- 
 hended and demonstrated by mortals, that I counsel 
 my students to defer this infinite inquiry, in their 
 discussions of Christian Science. In fact, they had 
 better leave the subject untouched, until they draw 
 nearer to the divine character, and are practically 
 
2 Caution in the Truth. 
 
 able to testify, by their lives, that as they come 
 closer to the true understanding of God, they lose 
 all sense of error. 
 
 The Scriptures declare that God is too pure to 
 behold iniquity (Habakkuk i. 13) ; but they also 
 declare that God pitieth them who fear Him ; that 
 there is no place where His voice is not heard ; 
 that He is " a very present help in time of trouble." 
 
 The sinner has no refuge from sin, except in God, 
 who is his salvation. We must, however, realize 
 God's presence, power, and love, in order to be 
 saved from sin. This realization takes away man's 
 fondness for sin and his pleasure in it; and, lastly, 
 it removes the pain which accrues to him from it. 
 Then follows this as the finale in Science : The 
 sinner loses his sense of sin, and gains a higher sense 
 of God, in whom there is no sin. 
 
 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. 
 
 In the same manner the sick lose their sense of 
 sickness, and gain that spiritual sense of harmony 
 which contains neither discord nor disease. 
 
Unity of Good. 3 
 
 According to this same rule, in Divine Science, 
 the dying — if they die in the Lord — awake from a 
 sense of death to a sense of Life in Christ, with 
 a knowledge of Truth and Love beyond what they 
 possessed before ; because their lives have grown so 
 far toward the stature of manhood in Christ Jesus, 
 that they are ready for a spiritual transfiguration, 
 through their affections and understanding. 
 
 Those who reach this transition, called death, 
 without having rightly improved the lessons of this 
 primary school of mortal existence, — and still 
 believe in matter's reality, pleasure, and pain, — are 
 not ready to understand Immortality. Hence they 
 awake only to another sphere of experience, and 
 must pass through another probationary state before 
 it can be truly said of them: : ' Blessed are the dead 
 who die in the Lord." 
 
 They upon whom the Second Death, of which we 
 read in the Apocalypse (Revelation xx. 6), hath no 
 power, are those who have obeyed God's commands, 
 and have washed their robes white through the 
 sufferings of the flesh and the triumphs of Spirit. 
 Thus they have reached the goal in Divine Science, 
 by knowing Him in whom they have believed. 
 
4 Caution in the Truth. 
 
 This knowledge is not the forbidden fruit of sin, 
 sickness, and death, but it is the fruit which grows 
 on the Tree of Life. This is the understanding of 
 God, whereby man is found in the image and like- 
 ness of Good, not of evil, of Health, not of sickness,- 
 of Life, not of death. 
 
 God is All-in-all. Hence He is in Himseli only, 
 in His own nature and character, and is perfect 
 Being, or consciousness. He is all the Life and 
 Mind there is or can be. Within Himself is every 
 embodiment of Life and Mind. 
 
 If He is All, He can have no consciousness of 
 anything unlike Himself ; because, if He is omni- 
 present, there can be nothing outside of Himself. 
 
 Now this self-same God is our Helper. He pities 
 us. He has mercy upon us, and guides every event 
 of our careers. He is near to them who adore Him. 
 To understand Him, without a single taint of our 
 mortal, finite sense of sin, sickness, or death, is to 
 approach Him and become like Him. 
 
 Truth is God, and in God's law. This law declares 
 that Truth is all, and there is no error. This law 
 of Truth destroys every phase of error. To gain a 
 temporary consciousness of God's law is to feel, in 
 
Caution in the Truth. r 
 
 a certain finite human sense, that Gqp comes to us 
 and pities us; but the attainment of the under- 
 standing of His presence, through the Science of 
 God, destroys our sense of imperfection, or of His 
 absence, through a diviner sense that God is all 
 true consciousness; and this convinces us that, as 
 we get still nearer Him, we must forever lose our 
 own consciousness of error. 
 
 But how could we lose all consciousness of error, 
 if God be conscious of it? God has not forbidden 
 man to know Him; on the contrary, *the Father 
 bids man have "the same Mind which was also in 
 Christ Jesus," — which was certainly the Divine 
 Mind -f but God does forbid man's acquaintance 
 with evil. Why? Because evil is no proper part 
 of the divine knowledge. 
 
 The Gospel declares (John xvii. 3) that Life 
 Eternal consists in the knowledge of the only true 
 God, and of Jesus Christ whom He has sent. 
 Surely from such an understanding of Science, such 
 knowing, the vision of sin is wholly excluded. 
 
 Nevertheless, at the present crude hour, no wise 
 men or women will rudely or prematurely agitate a 
 theme involving the All of Infinity. 
 
6 Unity of Good. 
 
 Rather will they rejoice in the small understanding 
 they have already gained of the wholeness of Deity, 
 and work gradually and gently up toward the perfect 
 thought divine. This meekness will increase their 
 apprehension of God. because their mental struggles 
 and pride of opinion will proportionately diminish. 
 
 Everyone should be encouraged not to accept any 
 personal opinion on so great a matter, but to seek 
 the divinity of this question of Truth, by following 
 upward individual convictions, undisturbed by the 
 frightened sense of any need of attempting to solve 
 every Life-problem in a day. 
 
 "Great is the mystery of Godliness," says Paul; 
 and mystery involves the unknown. No stubborn 
 purpose to force conclusions on this subject will 
 unfold in us a higher sense of Deity; neither 
 will it promote the cause of Truth, or enlighten the 
 individual thought. 
 
 Let us respect the rights of conscience and the 
 liberty of the Sons of God, so letting our "mod- 
 eration be known to all men." Let no enmity, no 
 untempered controversy, spring up between Christian 
 Science students, and Christians who wholly or par- 
 tially differ from them as to the nature of sin, and 
 
Caution in the Truth. 7 
 
 the marvellous unity of man with God, shadowed 
 forth in Scientific thought. Rather let the stately 
 goings of this wonderful part of Truth be left to the 
 supernal guidance. 
 
 "These are but parts of Thy ways," says Job; 
 and the whole is greater than its parts. Our present 
 understanding is but "the seed within itself," for it 
 is Divine Science, "bearing fruit after its kind." 
 
 Sooner or later the whole human race will learn 
 that, in proportion as the spotless selfhood of God 
 is understood, human nature will be renovated, 
 and man will receive a higher selfhood, derived 
 from God, and the redemption of mortals from sin, 
 sickness, and death be established on everlasting 
 foundations. 
 
 The Science of physical harmony, as now pre- 
 sented to the people in Divine Light, is radical 
 enough to promote as forcible collisions of thought 
 as the age has strength to bear. Until the heavenly 
 law of health, according to Christian Science, is 
 firmly grounded, even the thinkers are not pre- 
 pared to answer intelligently leading questions about 
 God and sin, and the world is far from ready to 
 assimilate such a grand and all-absorbing verity 
 
8 Unity of Good. 
 
 concerning the Divine Nature and Character, as is 
 embraced in the theory of God's blindness to error 
 and ignorance of sin. No wise mother, though a 
 graduate of Wellesley College, will talk to her babe 
 about the problems of Euclid. 
 
 Not much more than a half-century ago the asser- 
 tion of universal salvation provoked discussion and 
 horror, similar to what our declarations about sin 
 and Deity must arouse, if hastily pushed to the 
 front, while the platoons of Christian Science are 
 not yet thoroughly drilled in the plainer manual 
 of their spiritual armament. "Wait patiently on the 
 Lord;" and, in less than another fifty years, His 
 name will be magnified in the apprehension of this 
 new subject, as already He is glorified in the wide 
 extension of belief in the impartial grace of God, — 
 shown by the changes at Andover Seminary, and in 
 multitudes of other religious folds. 
 
 Nevertheless, though I thus speak, and from my 
 heart of hearts, it is due both to Christian Science 
 and myself to make also the following statement: 
 When I have most clearly seen and most sensibly 
 felt that the Infinite recognizes no sin, this has not 
 separated me from God, but has so bound me to 
 
Caution in the Truth. 9 
 
 Him as to enable me instantaneously to heal a can- 
 cer, which had eaten its way to the jugular vein. 
 
 In the same spiritual condition I have been able 
 to replace dislocated joints, and raise the dying to 
 speedy health. People are now living who can 
 bear witness to these cures. Herein is my evidence 
 from on high, that the views here promulgated on 
 this subject are correct. 
 
 Certain self-proved propositions pour into my 
 waiting thought in connection with these experi- 
 ences ; and here is one such conviction : that an 
 acknowledgment of the perfection of the Infinite 
 Unseen confers a power nothing else can. An 
 incontestable point in Divine Science is, that be- 
 cause God is All, a realization of this fact dispels 
 even the sense or consciousness of sin, and brings us 
 nearer to God, bringing out the highest phenomena 
 of the All-Mind. 
 
 ^5S)Q^ 
 
Sublime cmb lamest. 
 
 ,ET another query now be considered, which 
 gives much trouble to many earnest thinkers 
 before Science answers it. 
 
 Is anything real of which the physical senses are 
 cognizant? 
 
 Everything is as real as you make it, and no 
 more so. What you see, hear, feel, is a mode of 
 consciousness, and can have no other reality than 
 the sense you entertain of it. 
 
 It is dangerous to rest upon the evidence of the 
 senses, for this evidence is not absolute, and there- 
 fore not real, in our sense of the word. All that is 
 beautiful and good in your individual consciousness 
 is permanent. That which is not so is illusive and 
 fading. My insistence upon a proper understanding 
 of the unreality of matter and evil arises from their 
 deleterious effects, physical, moral, and intellectual, 
 upon the race. 
 
 All forms of error are uprooted in Science, on 
 
 
Seedtime and Harvest. 1 1 
 
 the same principle whereby sickness is healed, — 
 namely, by the establishment, through reason, rev- 
 elation, and Science, of the nothingness of every 
 claim of error, even the doctrine of heredity, and 
 other physical causes. I demonstrate the process 
 of Science ; for it proves my view conclusively, that 
 mortal mind is the cause of all disease. Destroy 
 the mental sense of the disease, and the disease 
 itself disappears. Destroy the sense of sin, and 
 sin itself disappears. 
 
 Material and sensual consciousness are mortal. 
 Hence they must, sometime and in some way, be 
 reckoned unreal. That time has partially come, or 
 my words would not have been spoken. Jesus has 
 made the way plain, — so plain that all are without 
 excuse who walk not in it ; but this way is not 
 the path of physical science, human philosophy, or 
 mystic psychology. 
 
 The talent and genius of the centuries have 
 wrongly reckoned. They have not based upon 
 revelation their arguments and conclusions as to 
 the source and resources of Being, — its combina- 
 tions, phenomena, and outcome, — but have built 
 instead upon the sand of human reason. They 
 
12 Unity of Good. 
 
 have not accepted the simple teaching and life of 
 Jesus, as the only true solution of the perplexing 
 problem of human existence. 
 
 Sometimes it is said, by those who fail to under- 
 stand me, that I monopolize ; and this is said 
 because ideas akin to mine have been held by a 
 few spiritual thinkers in all ages. So they have, 
 but in a far different form. Healing has gone on 
 continually ; yet healing, as I teach it, has not been 
 practised since the days of Christ. 
 
 What is the cardinal point of the difference in 
 my metaphysical system? This: that by denying the 
 reality of disease, sin, and death, I demonstrate the 
 Allness of God. This difference wholly separates 
 my system from all others. The reality of these 
 so-called existences I deny, because I do not find 
 them in God, and this system is built on Him as 
 the Supreme Being, or Sole Cause. I challenge my 
 critics to name any previous teachers, save Jesus 
 and his Apostles, who have thus taught. 
 
 If there be any monopoly in my teaching, it lies 
 in this utter reliance upon the One God, to whom 
 belong all things. 
 
 Life is God, or Spirit, the supersensible Eternal. 
 
Seedtime and Harvest. 1 3 
 
 The universe and man are the spiritual phenomena 
 of this One Infinite Mind. Spiritual phenomena 
 never converge toward aught but Infinite Deity. 
 Their gradations are spiritual and divine ; they can 
 not collapse, or lapse into their opposites, for God 
 is their Divine Principle. They live, because He 
 lives ; and they are eternally perfect, because He is 
 perfect, and governs them in the Truth of Divine 
 Science, whereof God is the Alpha and Omega, the 
 centre and circumference. 
 
 To attempt the calculation of His mighty ways, 
 from the evidence before the material senses, is 
 fatuous. It is like commencing with the minus sign, 
 to learn the principle of positive mathematics. 
 
 God was not in the whirlwind. He is not the 
 blind force of a material universe. Mortals must 
 learn this ; unless, pursued by their fears, they would 
 endeavor to hide from His presence under their 
 own falsities, and call in vain for the mountains of 
 unholiness to shield them from the penalty of error. 
 
 Jesus taught us to walk over, not into or with, the 
 currents of matter, or mortal mind. His teachings 
 beard the lions in their dens. He turned the water 
 into wine, he commanded the winds, he healed the 
 
*4 Unity of Good. 
 
 sick, — all in direct opposition to human philoso- 
 phy, and so-called natural science. He annulled 
 the laws of matter, showing them to be laws of 
 mortal mind, not of God. He showed the need 
 of changing this mind and its abortive laws. He 
 demanded a change of consciousness and evidence, 
 and effected this change through the higher laws 
 of God. The palsied hand moved, despite the 
 boastful sense of physical law and order. Jesus 
 stooped not to human consciousness, nor to the 
 evidence of the senses. He heeded not the taunt: 
 "That withered hand looks very real and feels 
 very real;" but he cut off this vain boasting, and 
 destroyed human pride, by taking away the material 
 evidence. If his patient was a theologian of some 
 bigoted sect, a physician, or a professor of natural 
 philosophy, — according to the ruder sort then prev- 
 alent, — he never thanked Jesus for restoring his 
 senseless hand ; but neither red tape nor indignity 
 hindered the divine process. Jesus required neither 
 cycles of time nor thought in order to mature fitness 
 for perfection and its possibilities. He said, "The 
 Kingdom of Heaven is here, and is included in 
 Mind." He declared: "Ye say there are yet four 
 
Seedtime and Harvest 15 
 
 months, and then cometh the harvest; but I say, 
 Look up, not down, for your fields are already 
 white for the harvest ; and gather the harvest by 
 mental, not material processes. The laborers are 
 few in this vineyard of Mind-sowing and reaping ; 
 but let them apply to the waiting grain the curving 
 sickle of Mind's eternal circle, and bind it with 
 bands of Soul." 
 
 <=^ 
 
 v ^l ^s 
 
 ^^dj^ 3 ^ 
 
(El)* flDeep Swings of <&ob. 
 
 CIENCE reverses the evidence of the senses 
 in Theology, on the same principle that 
 it does in Astronomy. Popular Theology 
 makes God tributary to man, coming at human 
 call ; whereas the reverse is true in Science. Men 
 must approach God reverently, doing their own 
 work in obedience to divine law, if they would 
 fulfil the intended harmony of Being. 
 
 The principle of music knows nothing of discord. 
 God is harmony's selfhood. His universal laws, 
 His unchangeableness, are not infringed in ethics, 
 any more than in music. To Him there is no moral 
 inharmony ; as we shall learn, proportionately as 
 we gain the true understanding of Deity. If God 
 could be conscious of sin, His infinite power would 
 straightway reduce the universe to chaos. 
 
 If God has any real knowledge of sin, sickness, 
 and death, they must be eternal ; since He is, in 
 the very fibre of His Being, "without beginning 
 of years or end of days." If God knows that 
 
The Deep Things of God. 17 
 
 which is not permanent, it follows that He knows 
 something which He must learn to unknow, for the 
 benefit of our race. 
 
 Such a view would bring us upon an outworn 
 theological platform, which contains such planks as 
 the Divine Repentance, and the belief that God 
 must one day do His work over again, because it 
 was not at first done aright. 
 
 Can it be seriously held, by any thinker, that long 
 after God made the universe, — earth, man, animals, 
 plants, the sun, the moon, and "the stars also," — 
 He should so gain wisdom and power from past 
 experience, that He could vastly improve upon His 
 own previous work, — as Burgess, the boatbuilder, 
 remedies in the Volunteer the shortcomings of the 
 Puritan's model? 
 
 Christians are commanded to grow in grace. Was 
 it necessary for God to grow in grace, that He 
 might rectify His spiritual universe? 
 
 The Jehovah, of limited Hebrew faith, might need 
 repentance, because His created children proved 
 sinful ; but the New Testament tells us of the Father 
 of Lights, with whom is "no variableness or shadow 
 of turning." God is not the shifting vane on the 
 
1 8 Unity of Good. 
 
 spire, but the corner-stone of living rock, firmer than 
 everlasting hills. 
 
 As God is Mind, if this Mind is familiar with evil, 
 all can not be good therein. Our infinite model 
 would be taken away. What is in Eternal Mind 
 must be reflected in man, Mind's image. How 
 then could man escape, or hope to escape, from a 
 knowledge which is everlasting in his Creator? 
 
 God never said that man would become better by 
 learning to distinguish evil from good, — but the 
 contrary, that by this knowledge, by man's first 
 disobedience, came "death into the world, and all 
 our woe." 
 
 "Shall mortal man be more just than God?" 
 asks the Poet-Patriarch. May men rid themselves 
 of an incubus which God never can throw off ? Do 
 mortals know more than God, that they may declare 
 Him absolutely cognizant of sin? 
 
 God created all things, and pronounced them 
 good. Was evil among these good things? Man 
 is God's child and image. If God knows evil, so 
 must man, or the likeness is incomplete, the image 
 marred. 
 
 If man must be destroyed by the knowledge oi 
 
 
 
The Deep Things of God. 19 
 
 evil, then his destruction comes through the very 
 knowledge caught from God, and the creature is 
 punished for his likeness to his Creator. 
 
 God is commonly called the sinless, and man 
 the sinful; but if the thought of sin could be pos- 
 sible in Deity, would Deity then be sinless? Would 
 God not of necessity take precedence as the Infinite 
 Sinner, and human sin become only an echo of the 
 divine? 
 
 Such vagaries are to be found in heathen religious 
 history. There are, or have been, devotees who 
 worship not the Good Deity, who will not harm 
 them, but the Bad Deity, who seeks to do them 
 mischief, and whom therefore they wish to bribe 
 with prayers into quiescence, as a criminal appeases, 
 with a money-bag, the venal officer. 
 
 Surely this is no Christian worship ! In Christ- 
 ianity, man bows to the Infinite Perfection, which 
 he is bidden to imitate. In Truth, such terms as 
 divine sin and infinite sinner are unheard-of contra- 
 dictions, — absurdities ; but would they be sheer 
 nonsense, if God has, or can have, a real knowl- 
 edge of sin? 
 
toajis $igl)jer tljan (£)nv toajis. 
 
 LIE has only one chance of successful 
 deception, — to be accounted true. Evil 
 seeks to fasten all error upon God, and so 
 make the lie seem part of Eternal Truth. 
 
 Emerson says, "Hitch your wagon to a star," 
 that you may be allied to the Deific Power, and 
 have the planets aid your journey, as the stars in 
 their courses fought against Sisera. (Judges v. 20. ) 
 Hourly, in Christian Science, man thus weds him- 
 self with God, or rather he ratifies a union predes- 
 tined from all eternity ; but Evil ties its wagonload 
 of offal to the divine chariots, — or seeks so to 
 do, — that its vileness may be christened purity, 
 and its darkness get consolation from borrowed 
 scintillations. 
 
 Jesus distinctly taught the arrogant Pharisees 
 that, from the beginning, their father, the Devil, 
 was the would-be murderer of Truth. A right 
 apprehension of the wonderful utterances of him 
 who "spake as never man spake," would despoil 
 
— ■> 
 
 I 
 
 Ways Higher than Our Ways. 21 
 
 error of its borrowed plumes, and transform the 
 universe into a home of marvellous light, — "a 
 consummation devoutly to be wished." 
 
 Error says : God must know evil because He 
 knows all things;" but Holy Writ declares, God 
 told our first parents that in the day when they 
 should partake of the fruit of evil, they must 
 surely die. Would it not absurdly follow that 
 God must perish, if He knows evil, and evil neces- 
 sarily leads to extinction? Rather let us think of 
 God as saying: "I am Infinite Good; therefore I 
 know not evil. Dwelling in Light, I can see only 
 the brightness of My own Glory." 
 
 Error may say that God can never save man from 
 sin, if He knows and sees it not; but God says: 
 "I am too pure to behold iniquity, and yet I save 
 man from everything that is unlike Myself." 
 
 Many fancy that our Heavenly Father reasons 
 thus: "If pain and sorrow were not in My Mind, 
 I could not put them away, and wipe the tears from 
 the eyes of My children." Error says: "You must 
 know grief in order to console it." Is this true? 
 Do we not oftenest console others in troubles that we 
 have outgrown? Is not our comforter always from 
 outside and above ourselves? 
 
' 
 
 22 Unity of Good. 
 
 God says: "I show My pity through divine law, 
 not through human. It is My sympathy with and 
 My knowledge of harmony^ (not inharmony) which 
 alone enable Me to rebuke, and eventually destroy, 
 every supposition of discord." 
 
 Error says: "God must know death, in order 
 to strike at its root; " but God saith: " I am ever- 
 conscious Life, and thus I conquer death; for to 
 be ever conscious of Life is to be never conscious 
 of death. I am All. A knowledge of aught beside 
 Myself is impossible." 
 
 If such knowledge of evil were possible to God, 
 it would lower His rank. 
 
 With God, knowledge is necessarily foreknoivledge ; 
 and foreknowledge and foreordination must be one, 
 in an Infinite Being. What Deity foreknows Deity 
 must foreordain ; else He is not omnipotent, and, 
 like ourselves, He foresees events which are contrary 
 to His creative will, yet which He can not avert. 
 
 If God knows evil at all, He must have had fore- 
 knowledge thereof ; and if He foreknew it, He must 
 virtually have intended it, or ordered it aforetime, — 
 foreordained it ; else how could it have come into 
 the world? 
 
Ways Higher than Our Ways. 
 
 23 
 
 But this we can not believe ol God ; for if the 
 Supreme Good could predestine or foreknow evil, 
 there would be sin in Deity, and this would be the 
 end of Infinite Moral Unity. " If the light that is 
 in Thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! " 
 On the contrary, evil is only a delusive deception, 
 without any actuality which Truth can know. 
 
 r^Xsfc^ 
 
notifications. 
 
 'OW is a mistake to be rectified? By reversal 
 or revision, — by seeing it in its proper light, 
 and then turning it, or turning from it. 
 We undo the statements of error by reversing 
 them. 
 
 Through these three statements, or misstatements, 
 Evil comes into authority : — 
 First : The Lord created it. 
 Second: The Lord knows it. 
 Third: I am afraid of it. 
 
 By a reverse process of argument Evil must be 
 dethroned : — 
 
 First: God never made evil. 
 
 Second: He knows it not. 
 
 Third: We therefore need not fear it. 
 
 Try this process, Dear Inquirer, and so reach that 
 Perfect Love which " casteth out fear," and then see 
 if this Love does not destroy in you all hate and the 
 sense of evil. You will awake to the perception of 
 
 \ 
 
Rectifications. 2 s 
 
 God as All-in-all. You will find yourself losing the 
 knowledge and the operation of sin, proportionably 
 as you realize the Divine Infinitude, and believe 
 that He can see nothing outside of His own focal 
 distance. 
 
ft €olloqn$. 
 
 N Romans (ii. 15) we read the Apostle's descrip- 
 tion of mental processes wherein human thoughts 
 are "meanwhile accusing or else excusing one 
 another." If we observe our mental processes, we 
 shall find that we are perpetually arguing with our- 
 selves ; yet each mortal is not two personalities, but 
 one. 
 
 In like manner Good and Evil talk to one another; 
 yet they are not two but one, for Evil is naught, and 
 Good only is reality. 
 
 Evil. God hath said : "Ye shall eat of every tree 
 of the garden." If you do not, your intellect will 
 be circumscribed, and the evidence of your personal 
 senses be denied. This would antagonize individual 
 consciousness and existence. 
 
 Good. The Lord is God. With Him is no con- 
 sciousness of evil, because there is nothing beside j 
 Him, or outside of Him. Individual consciousness 
 in man is inseparable from Good. There is no 
 
A Colloquy. 2 7 
 
 sensible matter, no sense in matter; but there is 
 a spiritual sense, a sense of Spirit, and this is the 
 only consciousness belonging to true individuality, 
 | or a divine sense of Being. 
 
 Evil. Why is this so? 
 
 Good. Because man is made after God's eternal 
 
 ikeness, and this likeness consists in a sense of har- 
 
 Ijnony and immortality, in which no evil can possibly 
 
 Well. You may eat of the fruit of godlikeness, but 
 
 M to the fruit of ungodliness, which is opposed to 
 
 'rruth, — ye shall not touch it, lest ye die. 
 
 Evil. But I would taste and know error for 
 pyself. 
 
 Good. Thou shalt not admit that error is some- 
 
 ing to know or be known, to eat or be eaten, to 
 
 -e or be seen, to feel or be felt. To admit the 
 
 iistence of error would be to admit the truth of a 
 
 Evil. But there is something besides Good. 
 >od knows that a knowledge of this something is 
 

 28 Unity of Good. 
 
 essential to happiness and life. A lie is as genuine 
 as Truth, though not so legitimate a child of God. 
 Whatever exists must come from God, and be 
 important to our knowledge. Error, even, is His 
 offspring. 
 
 Good. Whatever cometh not from the Eternal 
 Spirit, has its origin in the physical senses and 
 material brains, called human intellect 'and will-power. 
 — alias Intelligent Matter. 
 
 In Shakespeare's tragedy of King Lear, it was the' 
 
 traitorous and cruel treatment received by old Gloster 
 
 from his bastard son Edmund which makes true the! 
 
 lines : 
 
 The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices 
 Make instruments to scourge us. 
 
 His lawful son, Edgar, was to his father ever loyalj 
 Now God has no bastards to turn again and ren 
 their Maker. The divine children are born of la 
 and order, and Truth knows only such. 
 
 How well the Shakespearean tale agrees with tht, 
 word of Scripture, in Hebrews xii. 7, 8: "If ye 
 endure chastening, God dealeth with you as wit 
 sons : for what son is he whom the father chastenetl 
 
A Colloquy. 29 
 
 not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all 
 are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons." 
 
 The doubtful or spurious evidence of the senses 
 is not to be admitted, — especially when they testify 
 concerning Spirit, whereof they are confessedly 
 incompetent to speak. 
 
 Evil. But mortal mind and sin really exist ! 
 
 Good. How can they exist, unless God has cre- 
 ated them? And how can He create anything so 
 wholly unlike Himself, and foreign to His nature? 
 An evil material mind, so-called, can conceive of 
 God only as like itself, and knowing both evil and 
 good ; but a purely good and spiritual consciousness 
 has no sense whereby to cognize evil. Mortal mind 
 is the opposite of Immortal Mind, and sin the oppo- 
 site of goodness. I am the Infinite All. From me 
 * proceedeth all Mind, all consciousness, all individ- 
 uality, all being. My Mind is Divine Good, and 
 can not drift into evil. To believe in minds many is 
 to depart from the Supreme sense of harmony. Your 
 assumptions insist that there is more than the one 
 Mind, more than the one God ; but verily I say 
 
 --- =- 
 
30 Unity of Good. 
 
 unto you, God is All-in-all ; and you can never be 
 outside of His Oneness. 
 
 Evil. I am a finite consciousness, a material 
 individuality, — a mind in matter, which is both 
 evil and good. 
 
 Good. All Consciousness is Mind ; and Mind is 
 God, — an infinite, and not a finite consciousness. 
 This consciousness is reflected in individual con- 
 sciousness, or man, whose source is Infinite Mind. 
 There is no really finite mind, no finite conscious- 
 ness. There is no material substance, for Spirit is 
 all that endureth, and hence is the only Substance. 
 There is, can be, no evil mind, because Mind is 
 God. God and His ideas — that is, God and the 
 Universe — constitute all that exists. Man as God's 
 offspring, must be spiritual, perfect, eternal. 
 
 Evil. I am something separate from Good or 
 God. I am Substance. My mind is more than 
 matter. In my mortal mind, matter becomes con- 
 scious, and is able to see, taste, hear, feel, smell. 
 Whatever matter thus affirms is mainly correct. If 
 
 v^r 
 
A Colloqtty. 31 
 
 you, oh Good, deny this, then I deny your truthful- 
 ness. If you say that matter is unconscious, you 
 stultify my intellect, insult my conscience, and dis- 
 pute self-evident facts ; for nothing can be clearer 
 than the testimony of the five senses. 
 
 Good. Spirit is the only Substance. Spirit is 
 God, and God is Good ; hence Good is the only 
 Substance, the only Mind. Mind is not, can not 
 be, in matter. It sees, hears, feels, tastes, smells 
 as mind, and not as matter. Matter can not talk ; 
 and hence, whatever it appears to say of itself is a 
 lie. This lie, that Mind can be in matter, — claim- 
 ing to be something beside God, denying Truth and 
 its demonstration in Christian Science, — this lie I 
 declare an illusion. This denial enlarges the human 
 intellect, by removing its evidence from sense to 
 Soul, and from finiteness into Infinity. It honors 
 conscious human individuality, by showing God as 
 its source. 
 
 Evil. I am a creator, — but upon a material, not . 
 a spiritual basis. I give life, and I can destroy 
 life. 
 
32 Unity of Good. 
 
 Good. Evil is not a creator. God, Good, is the 
 only Creator. Evil is not conscious or conscientious 
 Mind ; it is not individual, not actual. Evil is not 
 spiritual, and therefore has no groundwork in Life, 
 whose only Source is Spirit. The elements which 
 belong to the Eternal All, — Life, Truth, Love, — 
 Evil can never take away. 
 
 Evil. I am intelligent matter ; and matter is 
 egoistic, having its own innate selfhood, and the 
 capacity to evolve mind. God is in matter, and 
 matter reproduces God. From Him come my 
 forms, near or remote. This is my honor, that God 
 is my author, authority, governor, disposer. I am 
 proud to be in His outstretched hands, and I shirk 
 all responsibility for myself as Evil, and for my 
 varying manifestations. 
 
 Good. You mistake, oh Evil! God is not your 
 authority and law. Neither is He the author of the 
 material changes, the phantasma, a belief in which 
 leads to such teaching as we find in the hymn-verse 
 so often sung in church : 
 
 XST 
 
A Colloquy. -$$ 
 
 Chance and change are busy ever, 
 
 Man decays and ages move; 
 But His mercy waneth never, — 
 
 God is Wisdom, God is Love. 
 
 Now if it be true that God's power never waneth. 
 how can it be also true that cha?ice and change are 
 universal factors, — that man decays ? Many ordinary 
 Christians protest against this stanza of Bowring's, 
 and its sentiment is foreign to Christian Science. 
 If God be changeless goodness* as sings another line 
 of this hymn, what place has chance in the divine 
 economy? Nay, there is in God naught fantastic. 
 All is real, all is serious. The phantasmagoria is a 
 product of human dreams. 
 
&l)e €90. 
 
 ROM various friends comes inquiry as to the 
 meaning of a word employed in the foregoing 
 colloquy. 
 
 There are two English words, often used as if 
 they were synonyms, which really have a shade of 
 difference between them. 
 
 An egotist is one who talks much of himself. 
 Egotism implies vanity and self-conceit. 
 
 Egoism is a more philosophical word, signifying a 
 passionate love of self, which doubts all existence 
 except its own. An egoist, therefore, is one uncertain 
 of everything except his own existence. 
 
 Applying these distinctions to Evil and God, we 
 shall find that Evil is egotistic, — boastful, but fleeing 
 like a shadow at daybreak ; while God is egoistic, 
 knowing only His own all-presence, all-knowledge, 
 all-power. 
 
 s. 
 
Curing Soul. 
 
 E read in the Hebrew Scriptures, "The Soul 
 
 that sinneth, it shall die." 
 What is Soul? Is it a reality within the 
 mortal body? Who can prove that? Anatomy has 
 not descried nor described Soul. It was never 
 touched by the scalpel nor cut with the dissecting- 
 knife. The five physical senses do not cognize it. 
 
 Who, then, dares define Soul as something within 
 man? As well might you declare some old castle to 
 be peopled with demons or angels, though never a 
 light or form was discerned therein, and not a spectre 
 had ever been seen going in or coming out. 
 
 The common hypotheses about souls are even 
 more vague than ordinary material conjectures, and 
 have less basis ; because material theories are built 
 on the evidence of the material senses. 
 
 Soul must be God ; since we learn Soul only as we 
 learn God, by spiritualization. As the five senses 
 take no cognizance of Soul, so they take no cog- 
 nizance of God. Whatever can not be taken in 
 
36 Unity of Good. 
 
 by mortal mind — by human reflection, reason, or 
 belief — must be the unfathomable Mind, which 
 "eye hath not seen nor ear heard." Soul stands 
 in this relation to every hypothesis as to its human 
 character. 
 
 If Soul sins, it is a sinner, and Jewish law con- 
 demned the sinner to death, — as does all criminal 
 law, to a certain extent. 
 
 As Spirit, Soul is immortal, because Spirit is God. 
 Hence as Spirit, Soul never sins. Spirit is Life. 
 Hence there is, there can be, no spiritual death. 
 
 Transcending the evidence of the material senses, 
 Science declares God to be the Soul of all Being, the 
 only Mind and Intelligence in the universe. There 
 is but one God, one Soul, or Mind, and that one is 
 infinite, supplying all that is absolutely immutable 
 and eternal, — Truth, Life, Love. 
 
 Science reveals Soul, as that which the senses can 
 not define from any standpoint of their own. What 
 the physical senses miscall Soul, Christian Science 
 defines as Material Sense ; and herein lies the dis- 
 crepancy between the true Science of Soul, and 
 that material sense of a soul which that very sense 
 
Living Soul. 37 
 
 declares can never be seen or measured or weighed 
 or touched by physicality. 
 
 Often we can elucidate the deep meaning of the 
 Scriptures by reading sense instead of soul, as in 
 the Forty-second Psalm: "Why art thou cast down 
 oh my soul [sense] ? . . . Hope thou in God [Soul] , 
 for I shall yet praise Him who is the health of my 
 countenance and my God [my Soul, Immortality]." 
 
 The Virgin Mother's sense being uplifted to behold 
 Spirit, as the sole origin of man, she exclaimed, " My 
 soul [sense] doth magnify the Lord." 
 
 Human language constantly uses the word soul 
 for sense. This it does, under the delusion that the 
 senses can reverse the spiritual facts of Science ; 
 whereas Science reverses the testimony of the senses. 
 
 Soul is Life, and being Spiritual Life, never sins. 
 Material sense is the so-called material life. Hence 
 this lower sense sins and suffers, according to mate- 
 rial belief, till divine understanding takes away this 
 belief, and restores Soul, or Spiritual Life. "He 
 restoreth my Soul," says David. 
 
 In his First Epistle to the Corinthians (xv. 45) 
 Paul writes: "The first man Adam was made a 
 living soul ; the last man Adam, a quickening Spirit." 
 
38 Unity of Good. 
 
 The Apostle refers to the second Adam as the Mes- 
 siah, our blessed Master, whose interpretation of 
 God and His creation — by restoring the spiritual 
 sense of man, as immortal instead of mortal — made 
 humanity victorious over death and the grave. 
 
 When I discovered the power of Spirit to break 
 the cords of matter, through a change in the mortal 
 sense of things, then I discerned the last Adam as 
 a quickening Spirit, and understood the meaning of 
 the declaration of Holy Writ, "The first shall be 
 last," — the living Soul shall be found a quickening 
 Spirit ; or, rather, shall reflect the Life of the Divine 
 Arbiter. 
 
 ^^jp 
 
 ^^ 
 
®bere is no JH alter. 
 
 OD is a Spirit " (or, more accurately trans- 
 lated," God is Spirit"), declares the 
 v f" Scripture (John iv. 24), "and they who 
 worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in 
 Truth." 
 
 If God is Spirit, and God is All, surely there can 
 be no matter ; for the divine All must be Spirit. 
 
 The tendency of Christianity is to spiritualize 
 thought and action. The demonstrations of Jesus 
 annulled the claims of matter, and overruled laws 
 material as emphatically as they annihilated sin. 
 
 According to Christian Science, the first idolatrous 
 claim of sin is, that matter exists ; the second, that 
 matter is Substance ; the third, that matter has 
 intelligence ; and the fourth, that matter, being so 
 endowed, produces life and death. 
 
 Hence my conscientious position, in the denial 
 of matter, rests on the fact that matter usurps the 
 authority of God, Spirit; and the nature and char- 
 
40 Unity of Good. 
 
 acter of matter, the antipode of Spirit, include 
 all that denies and defies Spirit, in quantity or 
 quality. 
 
 This subject can be enlarged. It can be shown, 
 in detail, that evil does not obtain in Spirit, God ; 
 and that God, or Good, is Spirit alone ; whereas, 
 evil does, according to belief, obtain in matter ; and 
 that evil is a false, claim, — false to God. false to 
 Truth and Life. Hence the claim of matter usurps 
 the prerogative of God, saying: "I am a creator. 
 God made me, and I make man and the material 
 universe." 
 
 Spirit is the only Creator, and man and the uni- 
 verse are His spiritual concepts. By matter is 
 commonly meant mind, — not the highest Mind, but 
 a false form of mind. This so-called mind and 
 matter can not be separated in origin and action. 
 
 What is this mind? It is not the Mind of Spirit ; for 
 spiritualization of thought destroys all sense of matter 
 as Substance, Life, or Intelligence, and enthrones 
 God in the eternal qualities of His Being. 
 
 This lower, misnamed mind is a false claim, 
 a suppositional mind, which I prefer to call 
 mortal mind. True Mind is immortal. This mortal 
 
There is no Matter. 41 
 
 mind declares itself material, in sin, sickness, 
 and death, virtually saying: "I am the opposite 
 of Spirit, of Holiness, Harmony, and Life." 
 
 To this declaration Christian Science responds, 
 in the words of our Master: "You were a murderer 
 from the beginning. The Truth abode not in you. 
 You are a liar, and the father of it." Here it 
 appears that a liar was in the neuter gender, — 
 neither masculine nor feminine. Hence it was not 
 man (the image of God) who lied, but the false 
 claim to personality, which I call mortal mind ; a 
 claim which Christian Science uncovers, in order to 
 demonstrate the falsity of the claim. 
 
 There are lesser arguments which prove matter to 
 be identical with mortal mind, and this mind a lie. 
 
 The physical senses (matter really having no sense) 
 give the only pretended testimony there can be as 
 to the existence of a substance called matter. Now 
 these senses, being material, can only testify from 
 their own evidence, and concerning themselves ; yet 
 we have it on divine authority: "If I bear witness 
 of myself, my witness is not true." (John v. 31.) 
 
 In other words: matter testifies of itself, "I am 
 matter ; " but unless matter is mind, it can not talk or 
 
42 Unity of Good. 
 
 testify ; and if it is mind, it is certainly not the Mind 
 of Christ, not the Mind that is identical with Truth. 
 
 Brain, thus assuming to testify, is only matter 
 within the skull, and is believed to be mind, only 
 through error and delusion. Examine that form of 
 matter called brains, and you find no mind therein. 
 Hence the logical sequence, that there is in reality 
 neither matter nor mortal mind, but that the self- 
 testimony of the physical senses is false. 
 
 Examine these witnesses for error, or falsity, and 
 observe the foundations of their testimony, and you 
 will find them divided in evidence, mocking the 
 Scripture (Matthew xviii. 16), "In the mouth of two 
 or three witnesses, every word may be established." 
 
 Sight. Mortal mind declares that matter sees, 
 through the organizations of matter, or that mind 
 sees by means of matter. Disorganize the so-called 
 material structure, and then mortal mind says: "I 
 can not see ; " and declares that matter is the master 
 of mind, and that non-intelligence governs. Mor- 
 tal mind admits that it sees only material images, 
 pictured on the eye's retina. 
 
 What then is the line of the syllogism? It must 
 
There is no Matter. 43 
 
 be this : That matter is not seen ; that mortal mind 
 can not see without matter ; and therefore that the 
 whole function of material sight is an illusion, a lie. 
 
 Here comes in the summary of the whole matter, 
 wherewith we started : that God is All, and God 
 is Spirit ; therefore there is nothing but Spirit ; and 
 consequently there is no matter. 
 
 Touch. Take another train of reasoning. Mortal 
 mind says that matter can not feel matter; yet put 
 your finger on a burning coal, and the nerves, 
 material nerves, do feel matter. 
 
 Again I ask : What evidence does mortal mind 
 afford that matter is substantial, is hot or cold? 
 Take away mortal mind, and matter could not feel 
 what it calls substance. Take away matter, and 
 mortal mind could not cognize its own so-called 
 substance, and this so-called mind would have no 
 identity. Nothing would remain to be seen or felt. 
 
 What is Substance ? W T hat is the reality of God and 
 the universe? Immortal Mind is the real Substance, 
 — Spirit, Life, Truth, and Love. 
 
 Taste. Mortal mind says ' ' I taste ; and this is 
 
44 Unity of Good. 
 
 sweet, this is sour." Let mortal mind change, and 
 say that sour is sweet, and so it would be. If every 
 mortal mind believed sweet to be sour, it would 
 be so ; for the qualities of matter are but qualities 
 of mortal mind. Change the mind, and the qual- 
 ity changes. Destroy the belief, and the quality 
 disappears. 
 
 The so-called material senses are found, upon 
 examination, to be mortally mental, instead of 
 material. Reduced to its proper denomination, 
 matter is mortal mind ; yet, strictly speaking, there 
 is no mortal mind, for Mind is immortal, and is not 
 matter, but Spirit. 
 
 Force. What is gravitation? Mortal mind says, 
 Gravitation is a material power, or force. I ask, 
 Which was first, matter or power? That which was 
 first was God, Immortal Mind, the Parent of all. 
 But God is Truth, and the forces of Truth are moral 
 and spiritual, not physical. They are not the mer- 
 ciless forces of matter. What then are the so-called 
 forces of matter? They are the phenomena of mor- 
 tal mind, and matter and mortal mind are one ; and 
 this one is a misstatement of Mind, God. 
 
 7*5" 
 
There is no Matter. 
 
 45 
 
 A molecule, as matter, is not formed by Spirit ; 
 for Spirit is spiritual consciousness alone. Hence 
 this spiritual consciousness can form nothing unlike 
 itself, Spirit, and Spirit is the only Creator. The 
 material atom is an outlined falsity of consciousness, 
 which can gather additional evidence of conscious- 
 ness and life, only as it adds lie to lie. This process 
 it names material attraction, and endows with the 
 double capacity of creator and creation. 
 
 From the beginning this lie was the false witness 
 against the fact that Spirit is All, beside which there 
 is no other existence. The use of a lie is, that it 
 unwittingly confirms Truth, when handled by Chris- 
 tian Science, which reverses false testimony and 
 gains a knowledge of God from opposite facts, or 
 phenomena. 
 
 This whole subject is met and solved by Christian 
 Science according to Scripture. Thus we see that 
 Spirit is Truth and Eternal Reality ; that matter is 
 the opposite of Spirit, — referred to in the New Tes- 
 tament as the flesh at war with Spirit; hence, that 
 matter is erroneous, transitory, unreal. 
 
 A further proof of this is the demonstration, 
 according to Christian Science, that by the reduction 
 
46 Unity of Good. 
 
 and the rejection of the claims of matter (instead of 
 acquiescence therein) man is improved physically, 
 mentally, morally, spiritually. 
 
 To deny the existence or reality of matter, and 
 yet admit the reality of moral evil, sin, or to say that 
 the Divine Mind is conscious of evil, yet is not con- 
 scious of matter, is erroneous. This error stultifies 
 the logic of Divine Science, and must interfere with 
 its practical demonstration. 
 
 IF 
 
 ■eer 
 
Is ®liere no EDcatl)? 
 
 ESUS not only said "I am the Way and the 
 Truth," but also, "I am the Life." God is 
 Life ; and as there is but one God, there can 
 be but one Life. Must man die, then, in order to 
 inherit Eternal Life and enter Heaven? 
 
 Our Master said, "The Kingdom is at hand." 
 Then God and Heaven, or Life, are present, and 
 death is not the real stepping-stone to Life and hap- 
 piness. They are now and here ; and a change in 
 human consciousness, from sin to holiness, would 
 reveal this wonder of Being. Because God is ever- 
 present, no boundary of time can separate us from 
 Him, and the Heaven of His presence ; and because 
 God is Life, all Life is eternal. 
 
 Is it unchristian to believe there is no death? Not 
 unless it be a sin to believe that God is Life, and 
 All-in-all. Evil and disease do not testify of Life 
 and God. 
 
 Human beings are physically mortal, but individ- 
 ually immortal. The evil, accompanying physical 
 
48 Unity of Good. 
 
 personality, is illusive and mortal ; but the good 
 attendant upon spiritual individuality is immortal. 
 Existing here and now, this unseen individuality is 
 real and eternal. The so-called material senses, and 
 the mortal mind which is misnamed man, take no 
 cognizance of spiritual individuality, which manifests 
 Immortality, whose Principle is God. 
 
 To God alone belong the indisputable realities of 
 Being. Death is a contradiction of Life, or God ; 
 therefore it is not in accordance with His law, but 
 antagonistic thereto. 
 
 Death then is error, opposed to Truth, — even the 
 unreality of mortal mind, not the reality of that Mind 
 which is Life. Error has no Life, and is virtually 
 without existence. Life is real ; and all is real which 
 proceeds from Life and is inseparable from it. 
 
 It is unchristian to believe in the transition called 
 material death, since matter has no Life, and such 
 misbelief must enthrone another power, an imaginary 
 Life, above the living and true God. A material 
 sense of Life robs God, by declaring that not He 
 alone is Life, but that something else also is Life, — 
 thus affirming the existence and rulership of more 
 
Is there no Death ? 49 
 
 gods than one. This idolatrous and false sense of 
 Life is all that dies, or appears to die. 
 
 The opposite understanding of God brings to light 
 Life and Immortality. Death has no quality of Life ; 
 and no divine fiat commands us to believe in aught 
 which is unlike God, or to deny that He is Life 
 Eternal. 
 
 Life as God, moral and spiritual Good, is not seen 
 in the mineral, vegetable, or animal kingdoms. 
 Hence the inevitable conclusion, that Life is not in 
 these kingdoms, and that the popular views to this 
 effect are not up to the Christian standard of Life, 
 or equal to the reality of Being, whose Principle is 
 God. 
 
 When "the Word is made flesh " among mortals, 
 the Truth of Life is rendered practical on the body. 
 Eternal Life is partially understood ; and sickness, 
 sin, and death yield to Holiness, Health, and Life, — 
 that is, to God. The lust of the flesh and the pride 
 of physical life must be quenched in the Divine 
 Essence, — that omnipotent Love which -annihilates 
 hate, that Life which knows no death. 
 
 "Who hath believed our report?" Who under- 
 stands these sayings? He to whom the arm of 
 
50 Unity of Good. 
 
 the Lord is revealed. He loves them from whom 
 Divine Science removes human weakness by divine 
 strength, and who unveil the Messiah, whose name 
 is Wonderful. 
 
 Man has no underived power. That selfhood is 
 false which opposes itself to God, claims another 
 father, and denies spiritual sonship ; but as many 
 as receive the knowledge of God in Science must 
 reflect, in some degree, the power of Him who gave 
 man dominion over all the earth. 
 
 As Soldiers of the Cross we must be brave, and 
 let Science declare the immortal status of man, 
 and deny the evidence of the material senses, which 
 testify that man dies. 
 
 As the image of God, or Life, man forever reflects 
 and embodies Life, not death. The material senses 
 testify falsely. They presuppose that God is good 
 and that man is evil, that Deity is deathless, but 
 that man dies, losing the divine likeness. 
 
 Science and material sense conflict at all points, 
 from the revolution of the earth to the fall of a 
 sparrow. It is mortality only that dies. 
 
 To say that you and I, as mortals, will not enter 
 this dark shadow of material sense, called death, is 
 
Is there no Death ? 51 
 
 to assert what we have not proved. Even such 
 folly and presumption are among the environments 
 of material sense which must perish, in order to 
 prove man deathless. 
 
 As Truth supersedes error, and bears the fruits 
 of Love, this understanding of Truth subordinates 
 the belief in death, and demonstrates Life as imper- 
 ative in the divine order of Being. 
 
 Jesus declares that they who believe his sayings 
 will never die ; therefore mortals can no more receive 
 everlasting Life by believing in death, than they can 
 become perfect by believing in imperfection, and 
 living imperfectly. 
 
 Life is God, and God is Good. Hence Life 
 abides in man; and man abides in Life, if he lives 
 in God, who holds Life by a spiritual, and not by a 
 material sense of Being. 
 
 A sense of death is not requisite to a proper or 
 true sense of Life, but beclouds it. Death can never 
 alarm or even appear to him who fully understands 
 Life. The death-penalty comes through our igno- 
 rance of Life, — of that which is without beginning 
 and without end, — and is the punishment of this 
 ignorance. 
 
52 Unity of Good. 
 
 Holding a material sense of Life, and lacking the 
 spiritual sense of it, mortals die in belief, and regard 
 all things as temporal. A sense material apprehends 
 nothing strictly belonging to the nature and office 
 of Life. It conceives and beholds nothing but mor- 
 tality, and has but a feeble concept of immortality. 
 
 In order to reach the true knowledge and con- 
 sciousness of Life, we must learn it of Good. Of 
 evil we can never learn it, because sin shuts out the 
 real sense of Life, and brings in an unreal sense of 
 suffering and death. 
 
 Knowledge of evil, or belief in it, involves a loss 
 of the true sense of Good, God ; and to know death, 
 or to believe in it, involves a temporary loss of God, 
 the infinite and only Life. 
 
 Resurrection from the Dead (that is, from the 
 Belief in Death) must come to all sooner or later; 
 and they who have part in this resurrection are they 
 upon whom the Second Death has no power. 
 
 The sweet and sacred sense of the permanence of 
 man's unity with his Maker can illumine our pres- 
 ent being with a continual presence and power of 
 Good, opening wide the portal from death into Life ; 
 and when this Life shall appear "we shall be like 
 
Is there no Death? 53 
 
 Him," and we shall go to the Father, not through 
 death, but through Life, not through error, but 
 through Truth. 
 
 All Life is Spirit, and Spirit can never dwell in its 
 antagonist, matter. Life, therefore, is not death, 
 because God can not be the opposite of Himself. 
 In Christian Science there is no matter ; hence mat- 
 ter neither lives nor dies. To the senses, matter 
 appears to both live and die, and these phenomena 
 appear to go on ad infinitum ; but such a theory- 
 implies perpetual disagreement with Spirit. 
 
 Life, God, being everywhere, it must follow that 
 death can be nowhere ; because there is no place 
 left for it. 
 
 Soul, Spirit, is deathless. Matter, sin, and death 
 are not the outcome of Spirit, Holiness, and Life. 
 What then are matter, sin, and death? They can 
 be nothing except the results of material conscious- 
 ness ; but material consciousness can have no real 
 existence, because it is not a living — that is to say, 
 a divine and intelligent — reality. 
 
 That man must be vicious before he can be vir- 
 tuous, dying before he can be deathless, material 
 before he can be spiritual, is an error of the senses ; 
 
54 Unity of Good. 
 
 for the very opposite of this error is the genuine 
 Science of Being. 
 
 Man, in Science, is as perfect and immortal now, 
 as when "the Morning Stars sang together, and all 
 the Sons of God shouted for joy." 
 
 With Christ, Life was not merely a sense of 
 existence, but a sense of might and ability to subdue 
 material conditions. No wonder "people were 
 astonished at his doctrines, for he taught them as 
 one having authority, and not as the Scribes." 
 
 As defined by Jesus, Life had no beginning; nor 
 was it the result of organization, or of an infusion of 
 power into matter. To him, Life was Spirit. 
 
 Truth, defiant of error or matter, is Science, dis- 
 pelling a false sense, and leading man into the true 
 sense of selfhood and Godhood ; wherein the mortal 
 does not develop the immortal, nor the material the 
 spiritual, but wherein true manhood and womanhood 
 go forth in the radiance of Eternal Being and its 
 perfections, unchanged and unchangeable. 
 
 This generation seems too material for any strong 
 demonstration over death, and hence can not bring 
 out the infinite reality of Life, — namely, that there 
 is no death, but only Life. The present mortal 
 
Is there no Death? 55 
 
 sense of Being is too finite for anchorage in Infinite 
 Good, God, because mortals now believe in the 
 possibility that Life can be evil. 
 
 The achievement of this ultimatum of Science, 
 complete triumph over death, requires time and 
 immense spiritual growth. 
 
 I have by no means spoken of myself, I can not 
 speak of myself, as ''sufficient for these things." I 
 insist only upon the fact, as it exists in Divine Sci- 
 ence, that man dies not, and on the words of the 
 Master in support of this verity, — words which can 
 never " pass away till all be fulfilled." 
 
 Because of these profound reasons I urge Chris- 
 tians to have more faith in living than in dying. I 
 exhort them to accept Christ 's promise, and unite 
 the influence of their own thoughts with the power of 
 his teachings, in the Science of Being. This will 
 interpret the Divine Power to human capacity, and 
 enable us to apprehend, or lay hold upon, that "for 
 which," as Paul says in the fifth chapter of Philip- 
 pians, "we are also apprehended [or grasped] by 
 Christ Jesus," — the ever-present Life, which knows 
 no death, the omnipresent Spirit, which knows no 
 matter. 
 
Jkrsonal Statements. 
 
 ANY misrepresentations are made concerning 
 myself and my doctrines, some of which are 
 * as unkind and unjust as they are untrue ; 
 
 but I can only repeat the Master's words: "They 
 know not what they do." 
 
 The foundations of these assertions, like the struc- 
 ture raised thereupon, are vain shadows, repeating — 
 if the popular couplet may be so paraphrased — 
 
 The old, old story, 
 Of Satan and his lie. 
 
 In the days of Eden T humanity was misled by a 
 false personality, — a talking snake, — according to 
 Biblical history. This pretender taught the opposite 
 of Truth. This abortive ego, this fable of error, is 
 laid bare in Christian Science. 
 
 Human theories call, or miscall, this evil a Child 
 of God. Philosophy would multiply and subdivide 
 personality into everything that exists, whether ex- 
 pressive or not expressive of the Mind which is God. 
 Human wisdom says of evil, "The Lord knows it! " 
 
 \ 
 
Personal Statements. 5 7 
 
 thus carrying out the Serpent's assurance : " In the 
 day ye eat thereof [when you, lie, get the floor], then 
 your eyes shall be opened [you shall be conscious 
 matter], and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and 
 evil [you shall believe a lie, and this lie shall 
 seem truth]." 
 
 Bruise the head of this Serpent, as Truth and " the 
 woman " are doing in Christian Science, and it stings 
 your heel, rears its crest proudly, and goes on say- 
 ing: "Am I not myself? Am I not mind and mat- 
 ter, person and thing? " We should answer: "Yes! 
 you are indeed yourself, and need most of all to be 
 rid of this self, for it is very far from God's likeness." 
 
 The egotist must come down and learn, in humil- 
 ity, that God never made evil. An evil ego, and his 
 assumed power, are falsities. These falsities need a 
 denial. The falsity is the teaching that matter can 
 be conscious ; and conscious matter implies Panthe- 
 ism. This Pantheism I unveil. I try to show its 
 all-pervading presence in certain forms of theology 
 and philosophy, where it becomes error's affirmative 
 to Truth's negative. Anatomy and physiology make 
 mind-matter a habitant of the cerebellum, whence 
 it telegraphs and telephones over its own body, and 
 
58 Unity of Good. 
 
 goes forth into an imaginary sphere of its own cre- 
 ation and limitation, until it finally dies in order to 
 better itself. But Truth never dies, and death is not 
 the goal which Truth seeks. 
 
 The evil ego has but the visionary substance of 
 matter. It lacks the Substance of Spirit, — Mind, 
 Life, Soul. . Mortal mind is self-creative and self- 
 sustained, until it becomes non-existent. It has no 
 origin or existence in Spirit, Immortal Mind, or 
 Good. Matter is not truly conscious ; and mortal 
 error, called mind, is not godlike. These are the 
 shadowy and false, which neither think nor speak. 
 
 All Truth is from inspiration and revelation, — 
 from Spirit, not from flesh. 
 
 We do not see much of the real man here, for he 
 is God's man ; while ours is man's man. 
 
 I do not deny, I maintain, the individuality and 
 reality of man ; but I do so on a divine Principle, 
 not based on a human conception and birth. The 
 Scientific man and his Maker are here ; and you 
 would be none other than this man, if you would 
 subordinate the fleshly perceptions to the spiritual 
 sense and Source of Being. 
 
 Jesus said, " I and the Father are one." He 
 
Personal Statements. 59 
 
 taught no selfhood as existent in matter. In his 
 identity there is no evil. Individuality and Life 
 were real to him only as spiritual and good, not as 
 material or evil. This incensed the rabbins against 
 Jesus, because it was an indignity to their person- 
 ality ; and this personality they regarded as both 
 good and evil, as is still claimed by the worldly wise. 
 To them evil was even more the Ego than was the 
 Good. Sin, sickness, and death were evil's con- 
 comitants. This evil ego they believed must extend 
 throughout the universe, as being equally identical 
 and self-conscious with God. This ego was in the 
 earthquake, thunderbolt, and tempest. 
 
 The Pharisees fought Jesus on this issue. It fur- 
 nished the battleground of the past, as it does of the 
 present. The fight was an effort to enthrone evil. 
 Jesus assumed the burden of disproof, by destroying 
 sin, sickness, and death, to sight and sense. , 
 
 Nowhere in Scripture is evil connected with Good, 
 the Being of God, and, with every passing hour, it 
 is losing its false claim to existence or consciousness. 
 All that can exist is God and His idea. 
 
(&vcbo. 
 
 TT is fair to ask of everyone a reason for the faith 
 within. Though it be but to repeat my twice- 
 told tale, — nay, the tale already told a hundred 
 times, — yet ask, and I will answer. 
 
 Do you believe in God ? 
 
 I believe more in Him than do most Christians, 
 for I have no faith in any other thing or being. He 
 sustains my individuality. Nay, more — He is my 
 individuality and my life. Because He lives, I live. 
 He heals all my ills, destroys my iniquities, deprives 
 death of its sting, and robs the grave of its victory. 
 
 To me God is All. He is best understood as 
 Supreme Being, as infinite and conscious Life, as the 
 affectionate Father and Mother of all He creates ; 
 but this Divine Parent no more enters into His 
 creation, than the human father enters into his child. 
 His creation is not the Ego, but the reflection of the 
 Ego. The Ego is God himself, the infinite Soul. 
 
 I believe that of which I am conscious through the 
 
Credo. 6 1 
 
 understanding, however faintly able to demonstrate 
 His Truth and Love. 
 
 Do you believe in Man ? 
 
 I believe in the individual man, for I understand 
 that man is as definite and eternal as God, and that 
 man is coexistent with God, as being the eternally- 
 divine idea. This is demonstrable by the simple 
 appeal to human consciousness. 
 
 But I believe less in the sinner, wrongly named 
 man. The more I understand true humanhood, the 
 more I see it to be sinless, — as ignorant of sin as is 
 the perfect Maker. 
 
 To me the reality and substance of Being are good, 
 and nothing else. Through the eternal reality of 
 existence I reach, in thought, a glorified conscious- 
 ness of the only living God and the genuine man. So 
 long as I hold evil in consciousness, I can not be 
 wholly good. 
 
 You can not simultaneously serve the Mammon of 
 Materiality and the God of Spirituality. There are 
 not two realities of Being, two opposite states 
 of existence. One should appear real to us, and 
 the other unreal, or we lose the Science of Being. 
 
62 Unity of Good. 
 
 Standing in no basic Truth, we make " the worse 
 appear the better reason," and the unreal masque- 
 rades as the real, in our thought. 
 
 Evil is without Principle. Being destitute of Prin- 
 ciple, it is devoid of Science. Hence it is undemon- 
 strable, without proof. This gives me a clearer right 
 to call evil a negation, than to affirm it to be some- 
 thing which God sees and knows, but which He 
 straightway commands mortals to shun or relinquish, 
 less it destroy them. This notion of the destructi- 
 bility of Mind implies the possibility of its defilement ; 
 but how can Infinite Mind be defiled? 
 
 Do you believe iti Matter 2 
 
 I believe in matter, only as I believe in evil, that 
 it is something to be denied and destroyed to human 
 consciousness, and is unknown to the Divine. We 
 should watch and pray that we enter not into the 
 temptation of Pantheistic belief in matter as sensible 
 mind. We should subjugate it as Jesus did, by a 
 dominant understanding of Spirit. 
 
 At best, matter is only a phenomenon of mortal 
 mind, of which evil is the highest degree ; but really 
 there is no such thing as mortal mind, — though we 
 
Credo. 63 
 
 are compelled to use the phrase in the endeavor to 
 express the underlying thought. 
 
 In reality there are no material states or stages of 
 consciousness, and matter has neither Mind nor 
 sensation. Like evil, it is destitute of Mind, for 
 Mind is God. 
 
 The less consciousness of evil or matter mortals 
 have, the easier it is for them to evade sin, sickness, 
 and death, — which are but states of false belief, — 
 and awake from the troubled dream, a consciousness 
 which is without Mind or Maker. 
 
 Matter and evil can not be conscious, and con- 
 sciousness should not be evil. Adopt this rule of 
 Science, and you will discover the material origin, 
 growth, maturity, and death of sinners, as the history 
 of man, disappears, and the everlasting facts of Being 
 appear, wherein man is the reflection of immutable 
 Good. 
 
 Reasoning from false premises, — that Life is mate- 
 rial, that Immortal Soul is sinful, and hence that sin 
 is eternal, — the reality of Being is neither seen, 
 felt, heard, nor understood. Human philosophy and 
 human reason can never make one hair white or 
 black, except in belief ; whereas the demonstration 
 
64 Unity of Good. 
 
 of God, as in Christian Science, is gained through 
 Christ as perfect manhood. 
 
 In Pantheism the world is bereft of its God, whose 
 place is ill supplied by the pretentious usurpation, 
 by matter, of the heavenly sovereignity. 
 
 What say you of Woman ? 
 
 Man is the generic term for all humanity. Woman 
 is the highest species of man, and this word is the 
 generic term for all women ; but not one of all these 
 individualities is an Eve or an Adam. They have 
 none of them lost their harmonious state, in the econ- 
 omy of God's wisdom and government. 
 
 The Ego is divine consciousness, eternally radiat- 
 ing throughout all space in the idea of God, Good, 
 and not of His opposite, evil. The Ego is revealed 
 as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ; but the full 
 Truth is found only in Divine Science, where we see 
 God as Life, Truth, and Love. In the Scientific 
 relation of man to God, man is reflected not as 
 human soul, but as the Divine ideal, whose Soul 
 is not in body, but in God, — the Divine Principle 
 of man. Hence it is sinless and immortal , in con- 
 tradistinction to the supposition that there can be 
 sinful souls or immortal sinners. 
 
Credo. 65 
 
 This Science of God and man is the Holy Ghost, 
 which reveals and sustains the unbroken and eternal 
 harmony of God, man, and the universe. It is the 
 Kingdom of Heaven, the ever-present reign of har- 
 mony, already with us. Hence the need that human 
 consciousness should become divine, in the coinci- 
 dence of God and man, in contradistinction to the 
 false consciousness of both Good and evil, God and 
 devil, — of man separated from his Maker. This is 
 the precious redemption of soul, or mortal sense, 
 through Christ's immortal sense of Truth, and is 
 Truth's spiritual idea, called man and woman. 
 
 What say you of Evil? 
 
 God is not the so-called Ego of evil ; for evil, as a 
 supposition, is the father of itself, of the material 
 world, the flesh, and the devil. From this falsehood 
 arise the self-destroying elements of this world, its 
 unkind forces, its tempest, lightnings, earthquakes, 
 poisons, rabid beasts, fatal reptiles and mortals. 
 
 Why are earth and mortals so elaborate in beauty, 
 color, and form, if God has no part in them? By 
 the law of opposites. The most beautiful blossom is 
 often poisonous, and the most beautiful mansion is 
 
66 Unity of Good. 
 
 sometimes the home of vice. The senses, not the 
 Soul, form the condition of beautiful evil, and the 
 supposed modes of self-conscious matter, which make 
 a beautiful lie. Now a lie takes its pattern from 
 Truth, by reversing Truth. So evil and all its forms 
 are inverted Good. God never made them ; but the 
 lie must say He made them, or it would not be evil. 
 Being a lie, it would be truthful to call itself a lie ; 
 and by calling the knowledge of evil good, and greatly 
 to be desired, it constitutes the lie an evil. 
 
 The reality and individuality of man are good 
 and God-made, and they are here to be seen and 
 demonstrated, it is only the evil belief that renders 
 them obscure. 
 
 Matter and evil are anti-christian, the antipodes 
 of Science. To say that Mind is material, or that 
 evil is Mind, is a misapprehension of Being, — a 
 mistake which will die of its own delusion ; for being 
 self-contradictory, it is also self-destructive. The 
 harmony of man's being is not built on such false 
 foundations, which are no more logical, philosophical, 
 or scientific, than would be the assertion that the rule 
 of addition is the rule of subtraction, and that sums 
 done under both rules would have one quotient. 
 
Credo. 67 
 
 Our individuality is not a mortal mind or sinner ; 
 or else we have lost our true individuality, as a 
 perfect child of God. Our Father is not a mortal 
 mind and a sinner ; or else the immortal and un- 
 erring Mind, God, is not our Father; but God is 
 our origin and loving Father, and hence that saying 
 of Jesus, " Call no man your Father upon the earth, 
 for one is your Father, which is in Heaven." 
 
 The bright gold of Truth is dimmed by the doctrine 
 of mind in matter. 
 
 To say there is a false claim, called sickness, is to 
 admit all there is of sickness ; for it is nothing but a 
 false claim. To be healed, one must lose sight of a 
 false claim. If the claim be present to the thought, 
 then disease becomes as tangible as any reality. 
 To regard sickness as a false claim, is to abate the 
 fear of it ; but this does not destroy the so-called 
 fact of the claim. In order to be whole, we must 
 deny every claim of sin. 
 
 As with sickness, so is it with sin. To admit that 
 sin has any claim whatever, just or unjust, is to admit 
 a dangerous fact. Hence the fact must be denied ; 
 for if sin's claim be allowed in any degree, then sin 
 destroys the at-one-ment, or oneness with God, — 
 
68 Unity of Good. 
 
 a unity which sin recognizes as its most potent and 
 deadly enemy. 
 
 If God knows sin, even as a false claimant, then 
 acquaintance with that claimant becomes legitimate 
 to mortals, and this knowledge would not be for- 
 bidden ; but God forbade man to know evil, at the 
 very beginning, when Satan held it up before man 
 as something desirable, and a distinct addition to 
 human wisdom, because the knowledge of evil would 
 make man a god, — a representation that God both 
 knew and admitted the dignity of evil. 
 
 Which is right, God, who denied the claims of 
 sin, and disowned its acquaintance, or the Serpent, 
 who pushed that claim with the glittering audacity 
 of diabolical and sinuous logic? 
 
 ~^tr" 
 
B 
 
 Suffering from ©tiers' S^ottgljts. 
 
 ESUS accepted the one fact whereby alone the 
 rule of Life can be demonstrated, — namely, 
 that there is no death. 
 
 In his own body he bore no infirmities. Though 
 " a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief," 
 as Isaiah says of him, he bore not his sins, but ours, 
 11 in his own body on the tree." " He was bruised 
 for our iniquities, and by his stripes we are healed." 
 
 He was the Way; and Christian Scientists, who 
 would demonstrate the Way, must keep close to his 
 path, that they may win the prize. The Way, in the 
 flesh, is the suffering which leads out of the flesh. 
 The Way, in Spirit, is the Way of Life, Truth, and 
 Love, redeeming us from the false sense of the flesh, 
 and the wounds it bears. This threefold Messiah 
 reveals the self-destroying ways of error, and the 
 Life-giving Way of Truth. 
 
 Job's faith and hope gained him the assurance 
 that by the sufferings of the flesh he should learn how 
 false are the pleasures and pains of material sense, 
 
70 Unity of Good. 
 
 and behold the Truth of Being, as expressed in his 
 conviction, "Yet in my flesh shall I see God," — 
 not without my flesh, but in my flesh. 
 
 The Chaos of mortal mind is made the stepping- 
 stone to the Cosmos of Immortal Mind. 
 
 If Jesus suffered, as the Scriptures declare, it must 
 have been from the mentality of others ; since all 
 suffering comes from mind, not from matter, and 
 
 there could be no sin or suffering in his Mind, which 
 was the Mind of God. Not his own sins, but the 
 sins of the world, " crucified the Lord of Glory, and 
 put him to an open shame." 
 
 Holding a quickened sense of false environment, 
 and suffering from mentality in opposition to Truth, 
 are significant of that state of mind which the actual 
 understanding of Christian Science first eliminates 
 and then destroys. 
 
 In the divine order of Science every follower of 
 Christ shares his cup of sorrows. He also suffer- 
 eth in the flesh, and from the mentality which op- 
 poses the Law of Spirit ; but the Divine Law is 
 supreme, for it freeth him from the law of sin and 
 death. 
 
 Prophets and Apostles suffered from the thoughts 
 
Suffering f?'om Others' Thoughts. 71 
 
 of others. Their conscious being was not fully 
 exempt from physicality and the sense of sin. 
 
 Until he awakes from his delusion, he suffers least, 
 from sin, who is a hardened sinner. The hypocrite's 
 affections must first be made to fret in their chains ; 
 and the pangs of Hell must lay hold of him, ere he 
 can change from flesh to Spirit, become acquainted 
 with that Love which is without dissumulation, and 
 endureth all things. Such mental conditions as in- 
 gratitude, lust, malice, hate, constitute the miasma 
 of earth. More obnoxious than Chinese stenchpots 
 are these dispositions, which offend the spiritual 
 sense. 
 
 Anatomically considered, the design of the material 
 senses is to warn mortals of the approach of danger, 
 by the pain they feel and occasion ; but spiritual 
 sense, foreseeing the impending doom, foretells the 
 pain and finds refuge in the secret place, " under 
 the shadow of the Almighty." 
 
 The Cross is the central emblem of human history. 
 Without it there is neither temptation nor glory. 
 When Jesus turned and said, "Who hath touched 
 me?" he must have felt the influence of the woman's 
 thought ; for it is written that he felt that ' ' virtue had 
 
72 Unity of Good. 
 
 gone out of him." His pure consciousness was dis- 
 criminating, and rendered this infallible verdict ; but 
 he neither held her error by affinity nor by infirmity, 
 for it was detected and dismissed. 
 
 This Gospel of Suffering brought Life and bliss. 
 This is earth's Bethel in stone, — its pillow, supporting 
 the ladder which reaches Heaven. 
 
 Suffering was the confirmation of Paul's faith. 
 Through "a thorn in the flesh" he learned that 
 spiritual grace was sufficient for him. 
 
 Peter rejoiced that he was found worthy to suffer for 
 Christ ; because to suffer with him is to reign with 
 him. 
 
 Sorrow is the harbinger of joy. Mortal throes of 
 anguish forward the birth of Immortal Being ; but 
 Divine Science wipes away all tears. 
 
 The only conscious existence in the flesh is error 
 of some sort, — sin, pain, death, — a false sense of 
 Life and happiness. Mortals, if at ease in so-called 
 existence, are in their native element of error, and 
 must become dis-eased, disquieted, before they can 
 get out of error into Truth. 
 
 Jesus walked with bleeding feet the thorny earth- 
 road, treading "the winepress alone." His perse- 
 
Suffering from Others 1 Thoughts. 73 
 
 cutors said mockingly, " Save thyself, and come 
 down from the Cross! " This was the very thing 
 he was doing, coming down from the Cross, saving 
 himself as he had saved others, by the law of Spirit's 
 supremacy ; and this was done through what is 
 humanly called agony. 
 
 Even the icebound hypocrite melts in fervent heat, 
 before he apprehends Christ as the Way. The 
 Master's sublime triumph over all mortal mentality 
 was Immortality's goal. He was too wise not to 
 be willing to test the full compass of human woe, 
 being "tempted in all points like as we are, yet 
 without sin." 
 
 Thus the absolute unreality of sin, sickness, and 
 death were revealed, — a revelation that beams on 
 mortal sense, as the midnight sun shines over the 
 Polar Sea. 
 
 ^®@^ 
 
QLtyz Smriour's Jttissiott. 
 
 F there is no reality in evil, why did the Messiah 
 come to the world, and from what evils was it 
 his purpose to save humankind? How, indeed, 
 is he a Saviour, if the evils from which he saves are 
 nonentities? 
 
 Jesus came to earth ; but the Christ (that is, the 
 Divine Principle which made Jesus the Christ) was 
 never absent from the earth, and could not come to 
 it ; for Jesus Christ spoke of himself as one who 
 came down from Heaven, yet as "the Son of Man 
 who is in Heaven " (John iii. 13). 
 
 Salvation is as eternal as God. To mortal thought 
 Christ seemed to come as a child, to grow to 
 manhood, to suffer before Pilate and on Calvary, 
 because he could reach and teach mankind only 
 through this conformity to mortal conditions ; but 
 Soul never saw the Saviour come and go, because he 
 was always present. 
 
 He came to rescue men from these very illusions 
 to which he seemed to conform : from the illusion 
 
The Saviour's Mission. 75 
 
 which calls sin real, and man a sinner, needing a 
 Saviour ; the illusion which calls sickness real, and 
 man an invalid, needing a physician; the illusion 
 that death is as real as Life. From such thoughts — 
 mortal inventions, one and all — Jesus came to save 
 men, through ever-present and eternal Good. 
 
 Mortal man is a kingdom divided against itself. 
 With the same breath he articulates truth and error. 
 We say that God is All, and there is none beside 
 Him, and then talk of sin and sinners as real. We 
 call God omnipotent and omnipresent, and then 
 conjure up, from the dark abyss of nothingness, a 
 powerful presence named evil. We say that har- 
 mony is real, and inharmony is its opposite, and 
 therefore unreal ; yet we descant upon sickness, sin, 
 and death as realities. 
 
 With the tongue "bless we God, even the Father ; 
 and therewith curse we men, who are made after the 
 similitude of God. Out of the same mouth pro- 
 ceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these 
 things ought not so to be" (James iii. 9, 10). Mor- 
 tals are free moral agents, to choose whom they 
 would serve. If God, then let them serve Him, and 
 He will be unto them All-in-all. 
 
y6 Unity of Good. 
 
 If God is ever-present, He is neither absent from 
 Himself nor from the universe. Without Him, the 
 universe would collapse, and space, substance, and 
 immortality be lost. Saint Paul says: "And if 
 Christ be not raised, your faith is vain ; ye are 
 yet in your sins" (i Corinthians xv. 17). Christ 
 can not come to mortal and material sense, which 
 sees not God. This false sense must yield to His 
 eternal presence, and so disappear. Rising above 
 the false, to the true evidence of Life, is the resur- 
 rection that takes hold of eternal Truth. Coming 
 and going belong to mortal consciousness. God 
 is "the same, yesterday, today, and forever." 
 
 To material sense, Jesus first appeared as a helpless 
 human babe ; but to immortal and spiritual vision 
 he was one with the Father, even the eternal idea 
 of God, that was — and is — neither young nor old, 
 neither dead nor risen. The mutations of mortal 
 sense are the evening and the morning of human 
 thought, — the twilight and dawn of earthly vision, 
 which precedeth the nightless radiance of Divine 
 Life. Human perception, advancing toward the 
 apprehension of the unchangeable God, halts, 
 retreats, and again goes forward ; but the Divine 
 
The Saviour's Mission. 77 
 
 Principle is always the same, — neither advancing, 
 retreating, nor halting. 
 
 Our highest sense of infinite Good in this mortal 
 sphere is but the sign and symbol, not the Substance 
 of Good. Only faith and a feeble understanding 
 make the earthly acme of human sense. "The Life 
 which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of 
 the Son of God " (Galatians ii. 20). 
 
 Christian Science is both demonstration and frui- 
 tion, but how attenuated are our demonstration and 
 realization of this Science ! Truth, in Divine Sci- 
 ence, is the stepping-stone to the understanding of 
 God ; but the broken and contrite heart soonest 
 discerns this Truth, even as the helpless sick are 
 soonest healed by it. Invalids say, " I have recov- 
 ered from sickness ;" when the fact really remains, 
 in Divine Science, that they never were sick. 
 
 The Christian saith " Christ (God) died for me, 
 and came to save me;" yet God dies not, and is 
 the ever-presence that neither comes nor goes, and 
 man is forever His image and likeness. "• The 
 things which are seen are temporal, but the things 
 which are unseen are eternal" (2 Corinthiaks 
 iv. 18). This is the mystery of godliness — that 
 
78 Unity of Good. 
 
 God, Good, is never absent, and there is none 
 beside Good. Mortals can understand this only as 
 they reach the Life of Good, and learn that there 
 is no Life in evil. Then shall it appear that the 
 true ideal of omnipotent and ever-present Good is 
 an ideal wherein and wherefor there is no evil. Sin 
 exists only as a sense, and not as Soul. Destroy 
 this sense of sin, and sin disappears. Sickness, sin, 
 and death are the false senses of Life and Good. 
 Destroy this Trinity of error, and you find Truth. 
 
 In Science, Christ never died. In sense Jesus 
 died, and lives again. The fleshly Jesus seemed 
 to die, though he did not. The Truth of Life 
 in Divine Science — undisturbed by human error, 
 sin, and death — saith forever, "I am the living 
 God, and man is My idea, never in matter, nor 
 resurrected from it. Why seek ye the living among 
 the dead? He is not here, but is risen" (Luke 
 xxiv. 5, 6). Mortal sense, confining itself to matter, 
 is all that can be buried or resurrected. 
 
 Mary had risen to discern faintly God's ever- 
 presence, and that of His idea, man ; but her mortal 
 sense, reversing Science and spiritual understand- 
 ing, interpreted this appearing as a risen Christ. 
 
The Saviour's Mission. 79 
 
 The I Am was neither buried nor resurrected. The 
 Way, the Truth, and the Life were never absent 
 for a moment. This Trinity of Love lives and 
 reigns forever. Its kingdom, not apparent to mate- 
 rial sense, never disappeared to spiritual sense, but 
 remained forever in the Science of Being. The 
 so-called appearing, disappearing, and reappearing 
 of Ever-presence, in whom is no variableness or 
 shadow of turning, is the false human sense of that 
 " Light which shineth in darkness, and the darkness 
 comprehendeth it not." 
 
 ^R)(5^ 
 
3o^ \ 
 
 
 C*~ 
 
 /</ 
 
 Srnnmarrj, 
 
 LL that is, God created. If sin has any 
 pretence of existence, God is responsible 
 therefor; but there is no reality in sin, for 
 God can no more behold it, or acknowledge it, than 
 the sun can coexist with darkness. 
 
 To build the individual spiritual sense, conscious 
 of only health, holiness, and Heaven, on the found- 
 ations of an Eternal Mind, which is conscious of 
 sickness, sin, and death, is a moral impossibility ; 
 for " other foundation can no man lay than that 
 is laid" (i Corinthians iii. n). The nearer we 
 approximate to such a Mind, even if it were (or 
 could be) God, the more real those mind-pictures 
 would become to us ; until the hope of ever elud- 
 ing their dread presence must yield to despair, and 
 the haunting sense of evil forever accompany our 
 being. 
 
 Mortals may climb the smooth glaciers, leap the 
 dark fissures, scale the treacherous ice, and stand on 
 the summit of Mont Blanc ; but they can never turn 
 back what Deity knoweth, nor escape from identifi- 
 cation with what dwelleth in the Eternal Mind.