0.0 – Christian Science – 16 Books by Mary Baker Eddy – Bk 5 – Unity of Good – Chpt 12 – Credo

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                                 CREDO 

 1	    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,
 3	the tale already told a hundred times, — yet ask, and I
  	will answer. 

  	    Do you believe in God? 

 6	     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
 9	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. 
12	    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
15	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,
18	the infinite Soul. 
  	    I believe that of which I am conscious through the
  	understanding, however faintly able to demonstrate Truth
21	and Love. 
 
   
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 1	    Do you believe in man? 

  	    I believe in the individual man, for I understand that
 3	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
 6	consciousness. 
  	    But I believe less in the sinner, wrongly named man. 
  	The more I understand true humanhood, the more I see it
 9	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
12	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. 
15	    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. 
18	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-
21	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-
24	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
27	shun or relinquish, lest it destroy them. This notion of
 
   
Unity of Good – Credo                                                                50


 1	the destructibility of Mind implies the possibility of its
  	defilement; but how can infinite Mind be defiled? 

 3	    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-
 6	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-
 9	jugate it as Jesus did, by a dominant understanding of
  	Spirit. 
  	    At best, matter is only a phenomenon of mortal mind,
12	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
15	thought. 
  	    In reality there are no material states or stages of con-
  	sciousness, and matter has neither Mind nor sensation. 
18	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,
21	 — which are but states of false belief, — and awake from
  	the troubled dream, a consciousness which is without
  	Mind or Maker. 
24	    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
27	death of sinners, as the history of man, disappears, and the
 
   
Unity of Good – Credo                                                                51


 1	everlasting facts of being appear, wherein man is the re-
  	flection of immutable good. 
 3	    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-
 6	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,
 9	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
12	matter, of the heavenly sovereignty. 

  	    What say you of woman? 

  	    Man is the generic term for all humanity. Woman is
15	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
18	harmonious state, in the economy of God's wisdom and
  	government. 
  	    The Ego is divine consciousness, eternally radiating
21	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
24	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
27	Soul is not in body, but is God, — the divine Principle of
 
   
Unity of Good – Credo                                                                52


 1	man. Hence Soul is sinless and immortal, in contradis-
  	tinction to the supposition that there can be sinful souls or
 3	immortal sinners. 
  	    This Science of God and man is the Holy Ghost, which
  	reveals and sustains the unbroken and eternal harmony
 6	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,
 9	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
12	precious redemption of soul, as mortal sense, through
  	Christ's immortal sense of Truth, which presents Truth's
  	spiritual idea, man and woman. 

15	    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,
18	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
21	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
24	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
27	beautiful evil, and the supposed modes of self-conscious
 
   
Unity of Good – Credo                                                                53


 1	matter, which make a beautiful lie. Now a lie takes its
  	pattern from Truth, by reversing Truth. So evil and all
 3	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
 6	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-
 9	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
12	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,
15	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-
18	sertion that the rule of addition is the rule of subtraction,
  	and that sums done under both rules would have one
  	quotient. 
21	    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;
24	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
27	upon the earth:  for one is your Father, which is in
  	heaven." 
  
   
Unity of Good – Credo                                                                54


1	    The bright gold of Truth is dimmed by the doctrine of
  	mind in matter. 
 3	    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
 6	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
 9	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
12	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
15	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-
18	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,
21	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-
24	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
27	pushed that claim with the glittering audacity of diabolical
  	and sinuous logic?SHOW ALL