UNITY OF GOOD

BY

MARY BAKER EDDY

AUTHOR OF SCIENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO

THE SCRIPTURES

BOSTON, U.S.A.

Published by Allison V. Stewart

for the trustees under the will of Mary Baker G. Eddy

Falmouth and St. Paul Streets

1917

Authorized Literature of

The First Church of Christ, Scientist

in Boston, Massachusetts

Copyright, 1887, 1891, 1908

By Mary Baker G. Eddy

All rights reserved

CONTENTS
	Page
Caution in the Truth . . . . . . . .	1
Does God know or behold sin, sickness, and death?	1
Seedtime and Harvest	8
Is anything real of which the physical senses are cognizant . . . . . . . . . . .	8
The Deep Things of God . . . . . . .	13
Ways Higher than Our Ways . . . . .	17
Rectifications . . . . . . . . . . . .	20
A Colloquy . . . . . . . . . . . .	21
The Ego . . . . . . . . . . . . .	27
Soul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .	28
There is no Matter . . . . . . . . .	31
Sight . . . . . . . . . . . . .	33
Touch . . . . . . . . . . . . .	34
Taste . . . . . . . . . . . . .	35
Force . . . . . . . . . . . . .	35
Is There no Death? . . . . . . . . .	37
Personal Statements . . . . . . . . .	44
vi CONTENTS
	Page
Credo . . . . . . . . . . . . . .	48
Do you believe in God? . . . . . . . .	48
Do you believe in man? . . . . . . . .	49
Do you believe in matter?. . . . . . .	50
What say you of woman? . . . . . . .	51
What say you of evil? . . . . . . . .	52
Suffering from Others' Thoughts. . . .	55
The Saviour's Mission . . . . . . . . .	59
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . .	64

UNITY OF GOOD

CAUTION IN THE TRUTH

PERHAPS no doctrine of Christian Science rouses so

much natural doubt and questioning 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 char-

acterized 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 able to testify, by their lives,

that as they come closer to the true understanding of God

they lose all sense of error.

1

2 UNITY OF GOOD

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 trouble."

The sinner has no refuge from sin, except in God, who

is his salvation. We must, however, realize God's pres-

ence, 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.

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; be-

cause their lives have grown so far toward the stature of

manhood in Christ Jesus, that they are ready for a spirit-

ual transfiguration, through their affections and under-

standing.

Those who reach this transition, called death, without

CAUTION IN THE TRUTH 3

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 im-

mortality. 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 which 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. 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 likeness of

good, not of evil; of health, not of sickness; of Life, not

of death.

God is All-in-all. Hence He is in Himself only, in His

own nature and character, and is perfect being, or con-

sciousness. 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 omnipresent, 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

4 UNITY OF GOOD

careers. He is near to them who adore Him. To under-

stand 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 con-

sciousness of God's law is to feel, in a certain finite human

sense, that God comes to us and pities us; but the attain-

ment of the understanding 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 con-

sciousness 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; but God does forbid man's

acquaintance with evil. Why? Because evil is no part

of the divine knowledge.

John's Gospel declares (xvii. 3) that "life eternal" con-

sists in the knowledge of the only true God, and of Jesus

Christ, whom He has sent. Surely from such an under-

standing of Science, such knowing, the vision of sin is

wholly excluded.

Nevertheless, at the present crude hour, no wise men or

CAUTION IN THE TRUTH 5

women will rudely or prematurely agitate a theme involv-

ing the All of infinity.

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 opin-

ion will proportionately diminish.

Every one should be encouraged not to accept any per-

sonal opinion on so great a matter, but to seek the divine

Science of this question of Truth by following upward indi-

vidual 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 "moderation be known

to all men." Let no enmity, no untempered controversy,

spring up between Christian Science students and Chris-

tians who wholly or partially differ from them as to the

nature of sin and 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

6 UNITY OF GOOD

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 presented 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 prepared 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 concern-

ing 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 assertion

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

CAUTION IN THE TRUTH 7

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 multi-

tudes 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 recog-

nizes no disease, this has not separated me from God, but

has so bound me to Him as to enable me instantaneously to

heal a cancer which had eaten its way to the jugular vein.

In the same spiritual condition I have been able to re-

place dislocated joints and raise the dying to instantaneous

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 experiences; and here is

one such conviction: that an acknowledgment of the per-

fection of the infinite Unseen confers a power nothing else

can. An incontestable point in divine Science is, that

because 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.

SEEDTIME AND HARVEST

LET 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 therefore 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 the same

basis whereby sickness is healed, — namely, by the es-

tablishment, through reason, revelation, and Science, of

the nothingness of every claim of error, even the doc-

trine of heredity and other physical causes. You demon-

strate the process of Science, and it proves my view

8

SEEDTIME AND HARVEST 9

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, some time and in some way, be reckoned un-

real. 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 combinations, phenomena, and outcome,

— but have built instead upon the sand of human reason.

They 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 understand

me, that I monopolize; and this is said because ideas

akin to mine have been held by a few spiritual think-

ers 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 meta-

physical system? This: that by knowing the unreality of

10 UNITY OF GOOD

disease, sin, and death, you demonstrate the allness of God.

This difference wholly separates my system from all others.

The reality of these so-called existences I deny, because

they are not to be found in God, and this system is built

on Him as the sole cause. It would be difficult 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. 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 cannot collapse, or lapse into their op-

posites, 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 prin-

ciple 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

SEEDTIME AND HARVEST 11

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 cur-

rents 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 sick, — all in

direct opposition to human philosophy 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 boast-

ing and destroyed human pride by taking away the ma-

terial evidence. If his patient was a theologian of some

bigoted sect, a physician, or a professor of natural phi-

losophy, — according to the ruder sort then prevalent, —

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 possibili-

ties. He said that the kingdom of heaven is here, and

is included in Mind; that while ye say, There are yet four

months, and then cometh the harvest, I say, Look up,

12 UNITY OF GOOD

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 curv-

ing sickle of Mind's eternal circle, and bind it with bands

of Soul.

THE DEEP THINGS OF GOD

SCIENCE reverses the evidence of the senses in the-

ology, 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 unchange-

ableness, 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 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

13

14 UNITY OF GOOD

platform, which contains such planks as the divine repent-

ance, 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, neither shadow of turning."

God is not the shifting vane on the spire, but the

corner-stone of living rock, firmer than everlasting hills.

As God is Mind, if this Mind is familiar with evil, all

cannot 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 learn-

ing to distinguish evil from good, — but the contrary, that

THE DEEP THINGS OF GOD 15

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 like-

ness is incomplete, the image marred.

If man must be destroyed by the knowledge of 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 possible 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 his-

tory. 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 there-

fore 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 Christianity

16 UNITY OF GOOD

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 contradictions, — absurdities; but

would they be sheer nonsense, if God has, or can have,

a real knowledge of sin?

WAYS HIGHER THAN OUR WAYS

A 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." I say,

Be allied to the deific power, and all that is good will aid

your journey, as the stars in their courses fought against

Sisera. (Judges v. 20.) Hourly, in Christian Science,

man thus weds himself with God, or rather he ratifies a

union predestined from all eternity; but evil ties its wagon-

load 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 wonder-

ful utterances of him who "spake as never man spake,"

would despoil error of its borrowed plumes, and trans-

form 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

17

18 UNITY OF GOOD

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 destroy 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

remedy them, and wipe the tears from the eyes of My chil-

dren. Error says you must know grief in order to console

it. Truth, God, says you oftenest console others in

troubles that you have not. Is not our comforter always

from outside and above ourselves?

God says, I show My pity through divine law, not

through human. It is My sympathy with and My knowl-

edge 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.

WAYS HIGHER THAN OUR WAYS 19

With God, knowledge, is necessarily foreknowledge; and

foreknowledge and foreordination must be one, in an in-

finite Being. What Deity foreknows, Deity must fore-

ordain; else He is not omnipotent, and, like ourselves,

He foresees events which are contrary to His creative will,

yet which He cannot avert.

If God knows evil at all, He must have had foreknowl-

edge 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?

But this we cannot believe of 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 therefore 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.

RECTIFICATIONS

HOW is a mistake to be rectified? By reversal or re-

vision, — 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 de-

throned: —

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 per-

fect 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 God as All-in-all.

You will find yourself losing the knowledge and the opera-

tion of sin, proportionably as you realize the divine in-

finitude and believe that He can see nothing outside of

His own focal distance.

20

A COLLOQUY

IN Romans (ii. 15) we read the apostle's description of

mental processes wherein human thoughts are "the

mean while accusing or else excusing one another." If we

observe our mental processes, we shall find that we are

perpetually arguing with ourselves; 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 circum-

scribed and the evidence of your personal senses be de-

nied. This would antagonize individual consciousness

and existence.

Good. The Lord is God. With Him is no conscious-

ness of evil, because there is nothing beside Him or

outside of Him. Individual consciousness in man is

inseparable from good. There is no 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.

21

22 UNITY OF GOOD

Evil. Why is this so?

Good. Because man is made after God's eternal like-

ness, and this likeness consists in a sense of harmony and

immortality, in which no evil can possibly dwell. You

may eat of the fruit of Godlikeness, but as to the fruit of

ungodliness, which is opposed to Truth, — ye shall not

touch it, lest ye die.

Evil. But I would taste and know error for myself.

Good. Thou shalt not admit that error is something

to know or be known, to eat or be eaten, to see or be seen,

to feel or be felt. To admit the existence of error would

be to admit the truth of a lie.

Evil. But there is something besides good. God

knows that a knowledge of this something is 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

A COLLOQUY 23

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 loyal. Now

God has no bastards to turn again and rend their Maker.

The divine children are born of law and order, and Truth

knows only such.

How well the Shakespearean tale agrees with the word

of Scripture, in Hebrews xii. 7, 8: "If ye endure chasten-

ing, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is

he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be with-

out 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 concern-

ing Spirit, whereof they are confessedly incompetent to

speak.

Evil. But mortal mind and sin really exist!

Good. How can they exist, unless God has created

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

24 UNITY OF GOOD

evil. Mortal mind is the opposite of immortal Mind, and

sin the opposite of goodness. I am the infinite All. From

me proceedeth all Mind, all consciousness, all individu-

ality, all being. My Mind is divine good, and cannot

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 unto you, God is All-in-all;

and you can never be outside of His oneness.

Evil. I am a finite consciousness, a material individu-

ality, — 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 conscious-

ness is reflected in individual consciousness, or man, whose

source is infinite Mind. There is no really finite mind, no

finite consciousness. 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 conscious, and is able to see,

taste, hear, feel, smell. Whatever matter thus affirms is

A COLLOQUY 25

mainly correct. If you, O good, deny this, then I deny

your truthfulness. If you say that matter is unconscious,

you stultify my intellect, insult my conscience, and dispute

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, cannot be, in matter. It sees, hears,

feels, tastes, smells as Mind, and not as matter. Matter

cannot talk; and hence, whatever it appears to say of

itself is a lie. This lie, that Mind can be in matter, —

claiming 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 finite-

ness into infinity. It honors conscious human individu-

ality 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.

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.

26 UNITY OF GOOD

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, dis-

poser. 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, O 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: —

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 chance 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 good-

ness, 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 phan-

tasmagoria is a product of human dreams.

THE EGO

FROM 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 every-

thing 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.

27

SOUL

WE 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 cog-

nizance of Soul, so they take no cognizance of God. What-

ever cannot be taken in by mortal mind — by human

reflection, reason, or belief — must be the unfathomable

Mind, which "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard." Soul

28

SOUL 29

stands in this relation to every hypothesis as to its human

character.

If Soul sins, it is a sinner, and Jewish law condemned

the sinner to death, — as does all criminal law, to a cer-

tain extent.

Spirit never sins, because Spirit is God. Hence, as

Spirit, Soul is sinless, and is God. Therefore 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 cannot

define from any standpoint of their own. What the physi-

cal senses miscall soul, Christian Science defines as mate-

rial sense; and herein lies the discrepancy between the

true Science of Soul and that material sense of a soul which

that very sense declares can never be seen or measured or

weighed or touched by physicality.

Often we can elucidate the deep meaning of the Scrip-

tures by reading sense instead of soul, as in the Forty-

second Psalm: "Why art thou cast down, O 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

30 UNITY OF GOOD

Spirit as the sole origin of man, she exclaimed, "My soul

[spiritual 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 re-

verses the testimony of the material senses.

Soul is Life, and being spiritual Life, never sins. Mate-

rial sense is the so-called material life. Hence this lower

sense sins and suffers, according to material 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

Adam was made a quickening spirit." The apostle re-

fers to the second Adam as the Messiah, 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.

THERE IS NO MATTER

"GOD is a Spirit" (or, more accurately translated,

"God is Spirit"), declares the Scripture (John iv.

24), "and they that 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 emphati-

cally 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 character of matter, the anti-

pode 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, accord-

31

32 UNITY OF GOOD

ing 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, including the uni-

verse, is His spiritual concept. By matter is commonly

meant mind, — not the highest Mind, but a false form of

mind. This so-called mind and matter cannot be sep-

arated 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 sup-

positional mind, which I prefer to call mortal mind. True

Mind is immortal. This mortal mind declares itself ma-

terial, in sin, sickness, and death, virtually saying, "I am

the opposite of Spirit, of holiness, harmony, and Life."

To this declaration Christian Science responds, even

as did our Master: "You were a murderer from the begin-

ning. 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 IS NO MATTER 33

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 cannot talk or 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 wit-

nesses every word may be established."

Sight. Mortal mind declares that matter sees through

the organizations of matter, or that mind sees by means

34 UNITY OF GOOD

of matter. Disorganize the so-called material structure,

and then mortal mind says, "I cannot see;" and declares

that matter is the master of mind, and that non-intelligence

governs. Mortal mind admits that it sees only material

images, pictured on the eye's retina.

What then is the line of the syllogism? It must be this:

That matter is not seen; that mortal mind cannot 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, where-

with we started: that God is All, and God is Spirit; there-

fore there is nothing but Spirit; and consequently there

is no matter.

Touch. Take another train of reasoning. Mortal mind

says that matter cannot 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 sub-

stance. 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? What is the reality of God and the

universe? Immortal Mind is the real substance, — Spirit,

Life, Truth, and Love.

THERE IS NO MATTER 35

Taste. Mortal mind says, "I taste; and this is 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 quality changes. Destroy the belief, and the quality

disappears.

The so-called material senses are found, upon examina-

tion, 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 gravi-

tation 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 physi-

cal. They are not the merciless forces of matter. What

then are the so-called forces of matter? They are the

phenomena of mortal mind, and matter and mortal

mind are one; and this one is a misstatement of Mind,

God.

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 out-

lined falsity of consciousness, which can gather additional

36 UNITY OF GOOD

evidence of consciousness 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 Christian Science, which reverses

false testimony and gains a knowledge of God from op-

posite 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 Testament as the flesh

at war with Spirit; hence, that matter is erroneous, tran-

sitory, unreal.

A further proof of this is the demonstration, according

to Christian Science, that by the reduction and the rejec-

tion 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 conscious of

matter, is erroneous. This error stultifies the logic of

divine Science, and must interfere with its practical

demonstration.

IS THERE NO DEATH?

JESUS not only declared himself "the way" and "the

truth," but also "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 of heaven is at hand."

Then God and heaven, or Life, are present, and death is

not the real stepping-stone to Life and happiness. 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 spiritually

immortal. The evil accompanying physical personality

is illusive and mortal; but the good attendant upon spirit-

ual 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 mis-

37

38 UNITY OF GOOD

named 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 ma-

terial 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 some-

thing else also is life, — thus affirming the existence and

rulership of more 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.

IS THERE NO DEATH? 39

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 om-

nipotent Love which annihilates hate, that Life which

knows no death.

"Who hath believed our report?" Who understands

these sayings? He to whom the arm of the Lord is re-

vealed. 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 knowl-

edge of God in Science must reflect, in some degree, the

power of Him who gave and giveth 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

40 UNITY OF GOOD

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 to assert

what we have not proved; but man in Science never dies.

Material sense, or the belief of life in matter, 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 imperative in the divine

order of being.

Jesus declares that they who believe his sayings will

never die; therefore mortals can no more receive ever-

lasting 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, if man abides in good, 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 ignorance of Life, — of

that which is without beginning and without end, — and

is the punishment of this ignorance.

Holding a material sense of Life, and lacking the spirit-

ual 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

IS THERE NO DEATH? 41

and beholds nothing but mortality, and has but a feeble

concept of immortality.

In order to reach the true knowledge and consciousness

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 present 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 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 antag-

onist, matter. Life, therefore, is deathless, because God

cannot be the opposite of Himself. In Christian Science

there is no matter; hence matter 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.

42 UNITY OF GOOD

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 consciousness; but material con-

sciousness 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 virtuous,

dying before he can be deathless, material before he can

be spiritual, is an error of the senses; 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 con-

ditions. No wonder "people were astonished at his doc-

trine; 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, dispelling

a false sense and leading man into the true sense of self-

hood 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

IS THERE NO DEATH? 43

of eternal being and its perfections, unchanged and

unchangeable.

This generation seems too material for any strong dem-

onstration over death, and hence cannot bring out the

infinite reality of Life, — namely, that there is no death,

but only Life. The present mortal 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, com-

plete triumph over death, requires time and immense

spiritual growth.

I have by no means spoken of myself, I cannot speak

of myself as "sufficient for these things." I insist only

upon the fact, as it exists in divine Science, 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 Christians

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 third chapter

of Philippians, we are also "apprehended of [or grasped

by] Christ Jesus," — the ever-present Life which knows

no death, the omnipresent Spirit which knows no matter.

PERSONAL STATEMENTS

MANY misrepresentations are made concerning 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 structure

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, 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 expressive or not expressive

of the Mind which is God. Human wisdom says of evil,

"The Lord knows it!" 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

44

PERSONAL STATEMENTS 45

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 saying, "Am

I not myself? Am I not mind and matter, person and

thing?" We should answer: "Yes! you are indeed your-

self, 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 humility,

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 pantheism. 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 goes

forth into an imaginary sphere of its own creation 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. Mor-

tal mind is self-creative and self-sustained, until it becomes

non-existent. It has no origin or existence in Spirit, im-

mortal Mind, or good. Matter is not truly conscious; and

46 UNITY OF GOOD

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 my Father are one." He 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 personality; 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 concomitants. This

evil ego they believed must extend throughout the uni-

verse, 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 furnished

the battle-ground of the past, as it does of the present.

The fight was an effort to enthrone evil. Jesus assumed

PERSONAL STATEMENTS 47

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.

CREDO

IT is fair to ask of every one 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

understanding, however faintly able to demonstrate Truth

and Love.

48

CREDO 49

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 consciousness of the only

living God and the genuine man. So long as I hold evil

in consciousness, I cannot be wholly good.

You cannot 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. Standing in no basic Truth, we

make "the worse appear the better reason," and the un-

real masquerades as the real, in our thought.

Evil is without Principle. Being destitute of Principle,

it is devoid of Science. Hence it is undemonstrable, with-

out proof. This gives me a clearer right to call evil a nega-

tion, than to affirm it to be something which God sees and

knows, but which He straightway commands mortals to

shun or relinquish, lest it destroy them. This notion of

50 UNITY OF GOOD

the destructibility of Mind implies the possibility of its

defilement; but how can infinite Mind be defiled?

Do you believe in matter?

I believe in matter only as I believe in evil, that it is

something to be denied and destroyed to human conscious-

ness, and is unknown to the Divine. We should watch

and pray that we enter not into the temptation of panthe-

istic belief in matter as sensible mind. We should sub-

jugate 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 are compelled

to use the phrase in the endeavor to express the underlying

thought.

In reality there are no material states or stages of con-

sciousness, 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 cannot be conscious, and consciousness

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

CREDO 51

everlasting facts of being appear, wherein man is the re-

flection of immutable good.

Reasoning from false premises, — that Life is material,

that immortal Soul is sinful, and hence that sin is eternal,

— the reality of being is neither seen, felt, heard, nor un-

derstood. Human philosophy and human reason can

never make one hair white or black, except in belief;

whereas the demonstration 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 sovereignty.

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 economy of God's wisdom and

government.

The Ego is divine consciousness, eternally radiating

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 is God, — the divine Principle of

52 UNITY OF GOOD

man. Hence Soul is sinless and immortal, in contradis-

tinction to the supposition that there can be sinful souls or

immortal sinners.

This Science of God and man is the Holy Ghost, which

reveals and sustains the unbroken and eternal harmony

of both God and the universe. It is the kingdom of heaven,

the ever-present reign of harmony, already with us. Hence

the need that human consciousness should become divine,

in the coincidence 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, as mortal sense, through

Christ's immortal sense of Truth, which presents Truth's

spiritual idea, man and woman.

What say you of evil?

God is not the so-called ego of evil; for evil, as a sup-

position, 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 tempests, 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 sometimes the home of

vice. The senses, not God, Soul, form the condition of

beautiful evil, and the supposed modes of self-conscious

CREDO 53

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 de-

sired, 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 as-

sertion that the rule of addition is the rule of subtraction,

and that sums done under both rules would have one

quotient.

Man's individuality is not a mortal mind or sinner; or

else he has lost his true individuality as a perfect child of

God. Man's Father is not a mortal mind and a sinner;

or else the immortal and unerring Mind, God, is not his

Father; but God is man's origin and loving Father,

hence that saying of Jesus, "Call no man your father

upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in

heaven."

54 UNITY OF GOOD

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 be insensible to every claim of error.

As with sickness, so is it with sin. To admit that sin

has any claim whatever, just or unjust, is to admit a dan-

gerous 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, — a unity which sin

recognizes as its most potent and deadly enemy.

If God knows sin, even as a false claimant, then ac-

quaintance with that claimant becomes legitimate to

mortals, and this knowledge would not be forbidden; 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 representa-

tion that God both knew and admitted the dignity of evil.

Which is right, — God, who condemned the knowledge

of sin and disowned its acquaintance, or the serpent, who

pushed that claim with the glittering audacity of diabolical

and sinuous logic?

SUFFERING FROM OTHERS' THOUGHTS

JESUS accepted the one fact whereby alone the rule of

Life can be demonstrated, —namely, that there is

no death.

In his real self 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, "in his own body on

the tree." "He was bruised for our iniquities; . . . and

with his stripes we are healed."

He was the Way-shower; 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

the so-called sufferings of the flesh are unreal. We shall

learn how false are the pleasures and pains of material

sense, and behold the truth of being, as expressed in his

conviction, "Yet in my flesh shall I see God;" that is,

Now and here shall I behold God, divine Love.

55

56 UNITY OF GOOD

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 the Mind which is 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 signifi-

cant 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 suffereth in the flesh,

and from the mentality which opposes 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 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 dissimulation and endureth all things. Such

mental conditions as ingratitude, lust, malice, hate, con-

stitute the miasma of earth. More obnoxious than

SUFFERING FROM OTHERS' THOUGHTS 57

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 as this sense disap-

pears it foresees the impending doom and foretells the

pain. Man's refuge is in spirituality, "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 gone out of him."

His pure consciousness was discriminating, 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

58 UNITY OF GOOD

sort, — sin, pain, death, — a false sense of life and happi-

ness. Mortals, if at ease in so-called existence, are in their

native element of error, and must become dis-eased, dis-

quieted, before error is annihilated.

Jesus walked with bleeding feet the thorny earth-road,

treading "the winepress alone." His persecutors 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 after the manner that he had

taught, by the law of Spirit's supremacy; and this was

done through what is humanly called agony.

Even the ice-bound hypocrite melts in fervent heat,

before he apprehends Christ as "the way." The Master's

sublime triumph over all mortal mentality was immortal-

ity's goal. He was too wise not to be willing to test the

full compass of human woe, being "in all points tempted

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.

THE SAVIOUR'S MISSION

IF 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

idea of the divine Principle which made heaven and earth)

was never absent from the earth and heaven; hence the

phraseology of Jesus, who spoke of the Christ as one who

came down from heaven, yet as "the Son of man which

is in heaven." (John iii. 13.) By this we understand

Christ to be the divine idea brought to the flesh in the son

of Mary.

Salvation is as eternal as God. To mortal thought

Jesus appeared as a child, and grew 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 the divine idea is always present.

Jesus came to rescue men from these very illusions to

which he seemed to conform: from the illusion 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

59

60 UNITY OF GOOD

Life. From such thoughts — mortal inventions, one and

all — Christ 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 harmony 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 simili-

tude [human concept] of God. Out of the same mouth

proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these

things ought not so to be." (James iii. 9, 10.) Mortals

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.

If God is ever present, He is neither absent from Him-

self nor from the universe. Without Him, the universe

would disappear, and space, substance, and immortality

be lost. St. Paul says, "And if Christ be not raised, your

faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins." (1 Corinthians xv.

17.) Christ cannot come to mortal and material sense,

which sees not God. This false sense of substance must

yield to His eternal presence, and so dissolve. Rising

THE SAVIOUR'S MISSION 61

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, and to-day, 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 its nothingness, halts, retreats, and

again goes forward; but the divine Principle and Spirit

and spiritual man are unchangeable, — 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 fruition,

but how attenuated are our demonstration and realization

of this Science! Truth, in divine Science, is the stepping-

stone to the understanding of God; but the broken and

contrite heart soonest discerns this truth, even as the help-

less sick are soonest healed by it. Invalids say, "I have

62 UNITY OF GOOD

recovered 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 not seen are eternal."

(2 Corinthians iv. 18.) This is the mystery of godliness

— that God, good, is never absent, and there is none be-

side 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, or death is a false sense of Life and good. Destroy

this trinity of error, and you find Truth.

In Science, Christ never died. In material sense Jesus

died, and lived. The fleshly Jesus seemed to die, though

he did not. The Truth or Life in divine Science — un-

disturbed 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, revers-

THE SAVIOUR'S MISSION 63

ing Science and spiritual understanding, interpreted this

appearing as a risen Christ. 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 material

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.

SUMMARY

ALL that is, God created. If sin has any pretense of

existence, God is responsible therefor; but there is

no reality in sin, for God can no more behold it, or acknowl-

edge it, than the sun can coexist with darkness.

To build the individual spiritual sense, conscious of

only health, holiness, and heaven, on the foundations 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." (1 Corinthians iii. 11.)

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 eluding 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 sum-

mit of Mont Blanc; but they can never turn back what

Deity knoweth, nor escape from identification with what

dwelleth in the eternal Mind.

The University Press, Cambridge, U. S. A.

HOME PAGE INDEX OF BOOKS, BOOKLETS, AND ARTICLES