0.0 – Christian Science Publication Contents

The genius of Christian Science is that it not only reveals and
interprets the infinite All of good, but that it also unmasks the pretence
of evil. To explain what God is must involve the explanation of what
God is not. The problem of evil barnes the theologian and the
philosopher, for in the face of God's infinite goodness and allness, how
can evil even seem to be? Theology ends up by making God somehow
responsible for evil, while philosophy elegantly shows evil to be a
mistake, a reversal of truth, and yet leaves it as a kind of actuality.
Christian Science approaches evil not as an intellectual teaser but as an
unreal proposition to be disproved; it shifts the grounds from theorizing to
demonstration. Christian Science never admits the actuality of evil; it does
not start with a problem and then try to heal it, but it proves the allness
of God by disproving the claim of evil.
Inevitably, after the first four books on the mighty reality of God, the
fifth must take up this challenge. It cannot merely say that God knows
no such thing as sin: it must show how Christian Science actually makes
nothing of sin. The parallel with the textbook's fifth chapter, ANIMAL
MAGNETISM UNMASKED, is self-evident throughout, as that chapter shows
how the Christ-consciousness strips bare the seeming reality and power
of evil.
This marvellous book, so full of sublime passages, was published in
March 1888. It comes right in the middle of the period (April 1887-
January 1889)... when the Journal carried a "Department of Animal
Magnetism," and one can feel from the majestic character of the book
how Mrs Eddy was able shortly to close that "Department." Unity of
Good introduces the Christ power disposing of the anti-Christ. The
Journal said of it, "this little book is at last ready for the public. Next to
Science and Health, it is the most important work she has written."
Originally entitled "Unity of Good and Unreality of Evil," it was revised
and renamed in 1891, so bringing the title into line with its central theme
- that good and evil "are not two but one, for evil is naught, and good
only is reality" (p. 21).
The age-old claim that comes welling up from the abyss is that evil is
as real as good. "The Pharisees fought Jesus on this issue. It furnished
the battleground of the past, as it does of the present. The fight was an
effort to enthrone evil. Jesus assumed the burden of disproof by
destroying sin, sickness, and death" (p. 46). We notice that the key is
not simply denial, but disproof
Unity oj Good is Mrs Eddy's purest statement of monism, in which
absolute good precludes the very existence of evil; any reality it seems to
have is but illusion. Yet the book is not content merely to make sweeping
statements: it goes right up to the problem of evil, removes its disguise,
and beholds only the face of God. Like a shadow which is invisible from
the standpoint of the light and exists only if we stand outside the
light-source, so evil can seem to have being only from a standpoint
outside God. (Almost by definition, evil is the belief that there can be
anywhere outside God.) "God is All-in-all; and you can never be outside
of His oneness" (p. 24). The purpose of Unity oj Good therefore is to
provide the God-standpoint; it looks out from the divine, "from the
Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of
turning" Uas. 1). To do this the book - as it were - reports God speaking
in the first person, and the pages are full of God saying, "I am All," "I
am infinite good," HI am ever-conscious Life," and so on. Here is the
standpoint which alone handles animal magnetism. "Dwelling in light, 1
can see only the brightness of My own glory" (p. 18).
Unity oj Good is the only writing other than Science and Health where we
find "the Ego," for in it we see God as the veritable 1 AM unmasking the
bogus ego of a mind apart from God: "The Ego is God Himself, the
infinite Soul" (p. 48), and so "this abortive ego, this fable of error, is laid
bare in Christian Science" (p. 44).
The book comprises fifteen sections. The first one, CAUTION IN THE
TRUTH, advises that the key question, Does God know sin? is best
answered by demonstration. The author then recounts a telling example
from 1883: "When 1 have most clearly seen and most sensibly felt that
the infinite recognizes 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" (p. 7). The jugular
vein is located in the neck, which connects head with body. The
God-head and the God-body (God and man) are connected in unity -
he unity of God and good; they are not divorced by a supposed cancer of
original sin. To work from the perfection of the God-head will give us a
proper sense of body. Perhaps this is why the same section refers (p. 5)
to the "Life-problem," alias the challenge of maintaining our primal
unity. Tackling the one "Life-problem" is the way to resolve life's
manifold problems, which are always to do with disunity. (Interestingly,
the only other place that "Life-problem" can be found is in the Preface
to Science and Health, where it heralds the purpose of that book.)
Demonstration is the most convincing answer, and so it leads on to the
next section: "What is the cardinal point of the difference in my
metaphysical system? This: that by knowing the unreality of disease, sin, and
death, you demonstrate the allness of God. This difference wholly
separates my system from all others" (p. 9).
Thus the sections flow on in their orderly structure, lifting the reader
on eagle's wings to adopt the divine viewpoint that knows nothing but its
own perfection. "Hourly, in Christian Science, man thus weds himself
with God, or rather he ratifies a union predestined from all eternity"
(p. 17). Such a union is not an abstract notion but is consciousness;
accordingly, of all the shorter Other Writings this one has by far the
most references to 'conscious' and 'consciousness.' A typical one is, "All
consciousness is Mind; and Mind is God - an infinite, and not a finite
consciousness. This consciousness is reflected in individual
consciousness, or man, whose source is infinite Mind" (p. 24). Even
more pointed is the logical consequence: this realization "honors
conscious human individuality by showing God as its source" (p.25).
No more authoritative statement could be given to correct the opinion
that 'the human' is worthless, or to explain just what is meant by "the
human and divine coincidence."
Unity of Good is the best example we have of how to take a divine view
of the human, and not confuse it with the physical or personal. The book
freely uses the word 'human' in its usual material sense of being finite
and mortal, yet again and again it startles us - as here on page 25 - with
quite a different meaning. A cloud looked at from below seems black,
while the same cloud viewed from above is white. The grand purpose of
Unity of Good is to enable us to adopt the standpoint of the Christconsciousness
- and thus to handle animal magnetism that argues for a
mortal consciousness. As a result we can experience the real human as
divinity in expression.
Developing the thought of true human individuality, it continues in
the section CREDO, "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 is
my individuality and my Life. Because He lives, I live ... The more I
understand true humanhood, the more I see it to be sinless" (p. 48).
CREDO goes on to answer "What say you of woman?" in a purely
metaphysical way, as a statement of oneness: "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 ... Hence the need that
human consciousness should become divine, in the coincidence of God
and man... This is.. . Christ's immortal sense of Truth, which
presents ... man and woman" (p. 52). Thus sin, if admitted as a reality,
would destroy "the at-one-ment, or oneness with God - a unity which sin
recognizes as its most potent and deadly enemy" (p. 54).
The book therefore revises the traditional view of Christ Jesus and his
meaning for humanity. In THE SAVIOUR'S MISSION Mrs Eddy writes,
"J esus came to rescue men from these very ill usions to which he seemed
to conform: from ... the illusion which calls sickness real, and man an
invalid, needing a physician; the illusion that death is as real as Life.
From such thoughts ... Christ Jesus came to save men, through
ever-present and eternal good" (p. 59).
Confirmation that Mrs Eddy was well aware of the correlation of UnifY
of Good (the fifth book) and ANIMAL MAGNETISM UNMASKED (the textbook's
fifth chapter) is shown by her Bible Lesson on p. 137 of Essays and Other
Footprints. Interpreting chapter 20 of Revelation, she writes: "Verses 1 and 2.
Science and Health is the angel sent down from heaven. Malicious Animal
Magnetism is the bottomless pit, and Science and Health gives us the key to
it ... it reduces sin, sickness, and death to a 'unit of nothingness.' Verse 3.
UnifY of Good is the seal that was put upon the devil and Satan, for its
teachings make it impossible for him to longer deceive the nations." A
'unit of nothingness' is to be explained by the unit of something ness, and
to this end the textbook describes the seven days of creation as the
"numerals of infinity," the actualities which dissolve the thousand-year
periods of time and mortality.
In this manner Unity of Good sets God's seal on the great truth that
God is All and evil is naught.

Mary Baker Eddy's Other Writings
'You will find me in my books'

“To be a Christian Scientist involves being changed; it demands an inner transformation, a renovation of the self, in order to become a transparency for the divine. This vital work is done by spiritualization of consciousness, but it is done in the area of life and of relationships, and it is on this area of experience that the Other Writings concentrate. Mrs Eddy herself considered these writings 'essential to preparing Christian Scientists for the full understanding of Science and Health'” (Orcutt 78).

"The spiritual beauty and practicality of these inspired books have made them beloved to generations of Christian Scientists, yet strangely few students today, a century later, know much about their origin, or regard them in their wholeness.  Yet this is critical to appreciating the value of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy’s flagship which is the Textbook of Christian Science.  Understanding this framework is necessary in order to approach the ever-unfoldment that takes place when a serious study of Christian Science is undertaken.  With this background information the student can read intelligently each piece in its setting, The message of the writings is enormously enhanced once he understands their occasion.  
See  Mary Baker Eddy's Other Writings by John L. Morgan  (1984)
Read more

              Unity of Good 

  	              CAUTION IN THE TRUTH 

 1	    Perhaps no doctrine of Christian Science rouses so
  	much natural doubt and questioning as this, that
 3	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-
 6	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,
 9	whose statement in Christian Science may justly be char-
         acterized as wonderful.

            Does God know or behold sin, sickness, and death? 

12	    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
15	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,
18	that as they come closer to the true understanding of God
  	they lose all sense of error. 
 
   
Unity of Good – Caution in the Truth                                             2


1	    The Scriptures declare that God is too pure to behold
  	iniquity (Habakkuk i. 13); but they also declare that
 3	God pitieth them who fear Him; that there is no place
  	where His voice is not heard; t...hat He is "a very present
  	help in trouble." 
 6	    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
 9	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
12	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
15	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,
18	and gain that spiritual sense of harmony which contains
  	neither discord nor disease. 
  	    According to this same rule, in divine Science, the
21	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-
24	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-
27	standing. 
  	    Those who reach this transition, called death, without
 
   
Unity of Good – Caution in the Truth                                             3


1 1	having rightly improved the lessons of this primary school
  	of mortal existence, — and still believe in matter's reality,
 3	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
 6	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
 9	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
12	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
15	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
18	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
21	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. 
24	    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. 
27	    Now this self-same God is our helper. He pities us. 
  	He has mercy upon us, and guides every event of our
 
   
Unity of Good – Caution in the Truth                                             4


1 1	careers. He is near to them who adore Him. To under-
  	stand Him, without a single taint of our mortal, finite sense
 3	of sin, sickness, or death, is to approach Him and become
  	like Him. 
  	    Truth is God, and in God's law. This law declares
 6	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
 9	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
12	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-
15	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
18	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
21	acquaintance with evil. Why? Because evil is no part
  	of the divine knowledge. 
  	    John's Gospel declares (xvii. 3) that "life eternal" con-
24	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
27	wholly excluded. 
  	    Nevertheless, at the present crude hour, no wise men or
 
   
Unity of Good – Caution in the Truth                                             5


1 1	women will rudely or prematurely agitate a theme involv-
  	ing the All of infinity. 
 3	    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
 6	divine. This meekness will increase their apprehension
  	of God, because their mental struggles and pride of opin-
  	ion will proportionately diminish. 
 9	    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-
12	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
15	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
18	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
21	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
24	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
27	the supernal guidance. 
  	    "These are but parts of Thy ways," says Job; and the
 
   
Unity of Good – Caution in the Truth                                             6


1 1	whole is greater than its parts. Our present understanding
  	is but "the seed within itself," for it is divine Science,
 3	"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,
 6	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
 9	everlasting foundations. 
  	    The Science of physical harmony, as now presented to
  	the people in divine light, is radical enough to promote
12	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
15	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-
18	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,
21	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,
24	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
27	plainer manual of their spiritual armament. "Wait
  	patiently on the Lord;" and in less than another fifty
 
   
Unity of Good – Caution in the Truth                                             7


1 1	years His name will be magnified in the apprehension of
  	this new subject, as already He is glorified in the wide
 3	extension of belief in the impartial grace of God, — 
  	shown by the changes at Andover Seminary and in multi-
  	tudes of other religious folds. 
 6	    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
 9	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
12	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
15	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. 
18	    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-
21	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
24	the sense or consciousness of sin, and brings us nearer to
  	God, bringing out the highest phenomena of the All-
  	Mind.
 
                                                                                                       8


               SEEDTIME AND HARVEST 

 1	    Let another query now be considered, which gives
  	much trouble to many earnest thinkers before Science
 3	answers it. 

  	    Is anything real of which the physical senses are cognizant? 

  	    Everything is as real as you make it, and no more so. 
 6	What you see, hear, feel, is a mode of consciousness, and
  	can have no other reality than the sense you entertain
  	of it. 
 9	    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
12	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
15	evil arises from their deleterious effects, physical, moral,
  	and intellectual, upon the race. 
  	    All forms of error are uprooted in Science, on the same
18	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-
21	trine of heredity and other physical causes. You demon-
  	strate the process of Science, and it proves my view
 
   
Unity of Good – Seedtime and Harvest                                         9


 1	conclusively, that mortal mind is the cause of all disease. 
  	Destroy the mental sense of the disease, and the disease
 3	itself disappears. Destroy the sense of sin, and sin itself
  	disappears. 
  	    Material and sensual consciousness are mortal. Hence
 6	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,
 9	 — 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. 
12	    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
15	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
18	Jesus as the only true solution of the perplexing problem
  	of human existence. 
  	    Sometimes it is said, by those who fail to understand
21	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
24	form. Healing has gone on continually; yet healing, as
  	I teach it, has not been practised since the days of
  	Christ. 
27	    What is the cardinal point of the difference in my meta-
  	physical system? This:  that by knowing the unreality of
 
   
Unity of Good – Seedtime and Harvest                                        10


 1	disease, sin, and death, you demonstrate the allness of God. 
  	This difference wholly separates my system from all others. 
 3	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
 6	any previous teachers, save Jesus and his apostles, who
  	have thus taught. 
  	    If there be any monopoly in my teaching, it lies in this
 9	utter reliance upon the one God, to whom belong all
  	things. 
  	    Life is God, or Spirit, the supersensible eternal. The
12	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
15	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
18	He is perfect, and governs them in the Truth of divine
  	Science, whereof God is the Alpha and Omega, the centre
  	and circumference. 
21	    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-
24	ciple of positive mathematics. 
  	    God was not in the whirlwind. He is not the blind
  	force of a material universe. Mortals must learn this;
27	unless, pursued by their fears, they would endeavor to
  	hide from His presence under their own falsities, and call
 
   
Unity of Good – Seedtime and Harvest                                        11


 1	in vain for the mountains of unholiness to shield them
  	from the penalty of error. 
 3	    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,
 6	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
 9	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
12	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
15	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-
18	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-
21	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
24	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
27	is included in Mind; that while ye say, There are yet four
  	months, and then cometh the harvest, I say, Look up,
 
   
Unity of Good – Seedtime and Harvest                                        12


 1	not down, for your fields are already white for the harvest;
  	and gather the harvest by mental, not material processes. 
 3	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
     6     of Soul.
 
                                                                                                    13  



                 THE DEEP THINGS OF GOD 

 1	    Science reverses the evidence of the senses in the-
  	ology, on the same principle that it does in astronomy. 
 3	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
 6	obedience to divine law, if they would fulfil the intended
  	harmony of being. 
  	    The principle of music knows nothing of discord. God
 9	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
12	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. 
15	    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
18	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. 
21	    Such a view would bring us upon an outworn theological
 
   
Unity of Good – The Deep Things of God                                   14


 1	platform, which contains such planks as the divine repent-
  	ance, and the belief that God must one day do His
 3	work over again, because it was not at first done
  	aright. 
  	    Can it be seriously held, by any thinker, that long after
 6	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
 9	could vastly improve upon His own previous work, — as
  	Burgess, the boatbuilder, remedies in the Volunteer the
  	shortcomings of the Puritan's model? 
12	    Christians are commanded to grow in grace. Was it
  	necessary for God to grow in grace, that He might rectify
  	His spiritual universe? 
15	    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,
18	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. 
21	    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
24	in man, Mind's image. How then could man escape, or
  	hope to escape, from a knowledge which is everlasting in
  	his creator? 
27	    God never said that man would become better by learn-
  	ing to distinguish evil from good, — but the contrary, that
 
   
Unity of Good – The Deep Things of God                                   15


 1	by this knowledge, by man's first disobedience, came
  	"death into the world, and all our woe." 
 3	    "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
 6	than God, that they may declare Him absolutely cognizant
  	of sin? 
  	    God created all things, and pronounced them good. 
 9	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. 
12	    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
15	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
18	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? 
21	    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
24	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
27	officer. 
  	    Surely this is no Christian worship! In Christianity,
 
   
Unity of Good – The Deep Things of God                                   16


 1	man bows to the infinite perfection which he is bidden to
  	imitate. In Truth, such terms as divine sin and infinite
 3	sinner are unheard-of contradictions, — absurdities; but
  	would they be sheer nonsense, if God has, or can have,
         a real knowledge of sin?
 
                                                                                                     17


       
          WAYS HIGHER THAN OUR WAYS 

 1	    A lie has only one chance of successful deception, — 
  	to be accounted true. Evil seeks to fasten all error
 3	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
 6	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
 9	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
12	get consolation from borrowed scintillations. 
  	    Jesus distinctly taught the arrogant Pharisees that, from
  	the beginning, their father, the devil, was the would-be
15	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-
18	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
21	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
 
   
Unity of Good – Ways Higher Than Our Ways                            18


 1	that God must perish, if He knows evil and evil neces-
  	sarily leads to extinction? Rather let us think of God as
 3	saying, I am infinite good; therefore I know not evil. 
  	Dwelling in light, I can see only the brightness of My
  	own glory. 
 6	    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
 9	Myself. 
  	    Many fancy that our heavenly Father reasons thus:
  	If pain and sorrow were not in My mind, I could not
12	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
15	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
18	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
21	discord. 
  	    Error says God must know death in order to strike at
  	its root; but God saith, I am ever-conscious Life, and
24	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. 
27	    If such knowledge of evil were possible to God, it would
  	lower His rank. 
 
   
Unity of Good – Ways Higher Than Our Ways                            19


 1	    With God, knowledge is necessarily foreknowledge; and
  	foreknowledge and foreordination must be one, in an in-
 3	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,
 6	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
 9	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
12	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,
15	how great is that darkness!" On the contrary, evil is
  	only a delusive deception, without any actuality which
         Truth can know.
 
                                                                                                     20




                               RECTIFICATIONS 

 1	    How is a mistake to be rectified? By reversal or re-
  	vision, — by seeing it in its proper light, and then
 3	turning it or turning from it. 
  	    We undo the statements of error by reversing them. 
  	    Through these three statements, or misstatements, evil
 6	comes into authority: —  
  	    First: The Lord created it. 
  	    Second: The Lord knows it. 
 9	    Third: I am afraid of it. 

  	    By a reverse process of argument evil must be de-
  	throned: —  
12	    First: God never made evil. 
  	    Second: He knows it not. 
  	    Third: We therefore need not fear it. 

15	    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. 
18	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-
21	finitude and believe that He can see nothing outside of
         His own focal distance.
 
                                                                                                        21




                            A COLLOQUY 

 1	    In Romans (ii. 15) we read the apostle's description of
  	mental processes wherein human thoughts are "the
 3	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
 6	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
 9	is reality. 

  	    Evil. God hath said, "Ye shall eat of every tree of the
  	garden." If you do not, your intellect will be circum-
12	scribed and the evidence of your personal senses be de-
  	nied. This would antagonize individual consciousness
  	and existence. 

15	    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
18	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
21	individuality, or a divine sense of being. 
 
   
Unity of Good – A Colloquy                                                         22


 1	    Evil. Why is this so? 

  	    Good. Because man is made after God's eternal like-
 3	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
 6	ungodliness, which is opposed to Truth, — ye shall not
  	touch it, lest ye die. 

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

 9	    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
12	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
15	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. 
18	Error, even, is His offspring. 

  	    Good. Whatever cometh not from the eternal Spirit,
  	has its origin in the physical senses and material brains,
21	called human intellect and will-power, — alias intelligent
  	matter. 
  	    In Shakespeare's tragedy of King Lear, it was the
 
   
Unity of Good – A Colloquy                                                         23


 1	traitorous and cruel treatment received by old Gloster
  	from his bastard son Edmund which makes true the lines:

 3	     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
 6	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. 
 9	    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
12	he whom the father chasteneth not?  But if ye be with-
  	out chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye
  	bastards, and not sons." 
15	    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
18	speak. 

  	    Evil. But mortal mind and sin really exist! 

  	    Good. How can they exist, unless God has created
21	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
24	knowing both evil and good; but a purely good and
  	spiritual consciousness has no sense whereby to cognize
 
   
Unity of Good – A Colloquy                                                         24


 1	evil. Mortal mind is the opposite of immortal Mind, and
  	sin the opposite of goodness. I am the infinite All. From
 3	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
 6	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;
 9	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. 

12	    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
15	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. 
18	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
21	be spiritual, perfect, eternal. 

  	    Evil. I am something separate from good or God. I
  	am substance. My mind is more than matter. In my
24	mortal mind, matter becomes conscious, and is able to see,
  	taste, hear, feel, smell. Whatever matter thus affirms is
 
   
Unity of Good – A Colloquy                                                         25


 1	mainly correct. If you, O good, deny this, then I deny
  	your truthfulness. If you say that matter is unconscious,
 3	you stultify my intellect, insult my conscience, and dispute
  	self-evident facts; for nothing can be clearer than the
  	testimony of the five senses. 

 6	    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,
 9	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, — 
12	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
15	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. 

18	    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
21	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
24	is Spirit. The elements which belong to the eternal All, — 
  	Life, Truth, Love, — evil can never take away. 
 
   
Unity of Good – A Colloquy                                                         26


 1	    Evil. I am intelligent matter; and matter is egoistic,
  	having its own innate selfhood and the capacity to evolve
 3	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-
 6	poser. I am proud to be in His outstretched hands, and
  	I shirk all responsibility for myself as evil, and for my
  	varying manifestations. 

 9	    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
12	as we find in the hymn-verse so often sung in church: — 

  	     Chance and change are busy ever,
  	       Man decays and ages move;
15	     But His mercy waneth never, — 
  	       God is wisdom, God is love.
 

  	    Now if it be true that God's power never waneth, how
18	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
21	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
24	naught fantastic. All is real, all is serious. The phan-
  	tasmagoria is a product of human dreams.
 
                                                                                                     27



    
                                              THE EGO 

 1	    From various friends comes inquiry as to the meaning
  	of a word employed in the foregoing colloquy. 
 3	    There are two English words, often used as if they were
  	synonyms, which really have a shade of difference between
  	them. 
 6	    An egotist is one who talks much of himself. Egotism
  	implies vanity and self-conceit. 
  	    Egoism is a more philosophical word, signifying a
 9	passionate love of self, which doubts all existence except
  	its own. An egoist, therefore, is one uncertain of every-
  	thing except his own existence. 
12	    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
15	His own all-presence, all-knowledge, all-power.
 
                                                                                                     28     
         


                                       SOUL 

 1	    We read in the Hebrew Scriptures, "The soul that
  	sinneth, it shall die." 
 3	    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
 6	cut with the dissecting-knife. The five physical senses do
  	not cognize it. 
  	    Who, then, dares define Soul as something within man? 
 9	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
12	going in or coming out. 
  	    The common hypotheses about souls are even more
  	vague than ordinary material conjectures, and have less
15	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
18	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
21	reflection, reason, or belief — must be the unfathomable
  	Mind, which "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard." Soul
 
   
Unity of Good – Soul                                                                    29


 1	stands in this relation to every hypothesis as to its human
  	character. 
 3	    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. 
 6	    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. 
 9	    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
12	God, one Soul, or Mind, and that one is infinite, supplying
  	all that is absolutely immutable and eternal, — Truth,
  	Life, Love. 
15	    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-
18	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
21	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-
24	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
27	my God [my Soul, immortality]." 
  	    The Virgin-mother's sense being uplifted to behold
 
   
Unity of Good – Soul                                                                    30


 1	Spirit as the sole origin of man, she exclaimed, "My soul
  	[spiritual sense] doth magnify the Lord." 
 3	    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-
 6	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
 9	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
12	David. 
  	    In his first epistle to the Corinthians (xv. 45) Paul writes:
  	"The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last
15	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 — 
18	by restoring the spiritual sense of man as immortal instead
  	of mortal — made humanity victorious over death and the
  	grave. 
21	    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
24	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
    27     the Life of the divine Arbiter.
 
                                                                                                     31



                THERE IS NO MATTER 

 1	    "God is a Spirit" (or, more accurately translated,
  	"God is Spirit"), declares the Scripture (John iv.
 3	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
 6	matter; for the divine All must be Spirit. 
  	    The tendency of Christianity is to spiritualize thought
  	and action. The demonstrations of Jesus annulled the
 9	claims of matter, and overruled laws material as emphati-
  	cally as they annihilated sin. 
  	    According to Christian Science, the first idolatrous claim
12	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
15	and death. 
  	    Hence my conscientious position, in the denial of matter,
  	rests on the fact that matter usurps the authority of God,
18	Spirit; and the nature and character of matter, the anti-
  	pode of Spirit, include all that denies and defies Spirit, in
  	quantity or quality. 
21	    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-
 
   
Unity of Good – There Is No Matter                                             32


 1	ing to belief, obtain in matter; and that evil is a false
  	claim, — false to God, false to Truth and Life. Hence
 3	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." 
 6	    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
 9	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
12	spiritualization of thought destroys all sense of matter as
  	substance, Life, or intelligence, and enthrones God in
  	the eternal qualities of His being. 
15	    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-
18	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
21	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
24	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
27	which Christian Science uncovers, in order to demonstrate
  	the falsity of the claim. 
 
   
Unity of Good – There Is No Matter                                             33


 1	    There are lesser arguments which prove matter to be
  	identical with mortal mind, and this mind a lie. 
 3	    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,
 6	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
 9	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
12	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
15	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,
18	that there is in reality neither matter nor mortal mind,
  	but that the self-testimony of the physical senses is
  	false. 
21	    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
24	(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
27	the organizations of matter, or that mind sees by means
 
   
Unity of Good – There Is No Matter                                             34


 1	of matter. Disorganize the so-called material structure,
  	and then mortal mind says, "I cannot see;" and declares
 3	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. 
 6	    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
 9	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-
12	fore there is nothing but Spirit; and consequently there
  	is no matter. 

  	    Touch. Take another train of reasoning. Mortal mind
15	says that matter cannot feel matter; yet put your finger
  	on a burning coal, and the nerves, material nerves, do
  	feel matter. 
18	    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-
21	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
24	be seen or felt. 
  	    What is substance? What is the reality of God and the
  	universe? Immortal Mind is the real substance, — Spirit,
27	Life, Truth, and Love. 

 
   
Unity of Good – There Is No Matter                                             35


 1	    Taste. Mortal mind says, "I taste; and this is sweet,
  	this is sour." Let mortal mind change, and say that sour
 3	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
 6	the quality changes. Destroy the belief, and the quality
  	disappears. 
  	    The so-called material senses are found, upon examina-
 9	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
12	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
15	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-
18	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
21	mind are one; and this one is a misstatement of Mind,
  	God. 
  	    A molecule, as matter, is not formed by Spirit; for
24	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-
27	lined falsity of consciousness, which can gather additional
 
   
Unity of Good – There Is No Matter                                             36


 1	evidence of consciousness and life only as it adds lie to lie. 
  	This process it names material attraction, and endows
 3	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
 6	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-
 9	posite facts, or phenomena. 
  	    This whole subject is met and solved by Christian
  	Science according to Scripture. Thus we see that Spirit
12	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-
15	sitory, unreal. 
  	    A further proof of this is the demonstration, according
  	to Christian Science, that by the reduction and the rejec-
18	tion of the claims of matter (instead of acquiescence
  	therein) man is improved physically, mentally, morally,
  	spiritually. 
21	    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
24	matter, is erroneous. This error stultifies the logic of
  	divine Science, and must interfere with its practical
  	demonstration.
 
                                                                                                     37     




                    IS THERE NO DEATH? 

 1	    Jesus not only declared himself "the way" and "the
  	truth," but also "the life." God is Life; and as
 3	there is but one God, there can be but one Life. Must
  	man die, then, in order to inherit eternal life and enter
  	heaven? 
 6	    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
 9	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
12	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
15	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
18	immortal. The evil accompanying physical personality
  	is illusive and mortal; but the good attendant upon spirit-
  	ual individuality is immortal. Existing here and now,
21	this unseen individuality is real and eternal. The so-
  	called material senses, and the mortal mind which is mis-
 
   
Unity of Good – There Is No Death                                              38


 1	named man, take no cognizance of spiritual individuality,
  	which manifests immortality, whose Principle is God. 
 3	    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. 
 6	    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
 9	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-
12	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
15	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
18	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
21	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
24	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
27	Christian standard of Life, or equal to the reality of being,
  	whose Principle is God. 
 
   
Unity of Good – There Is No Death                                              39


 1	    When "the Word" is "made flesh" among mortals,
  	the Truth of Life is rendered practical on the body. 
 3	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
 6	life must be quenched in the divine essence, — that om-
  	nipotent Love which annihilates hate, that Life which
  	knows no death. 
 9	    "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
12	human weakness by divine strength, and who unveil the
  	Messiah, whose name is Wonderful. 
  	    Man has no underived power. That selfhood is false
15	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
18	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
21	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
24	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
27	the divine likeness. 
  	    Science and material sense conflict at all points, from
 
   
Unity of Good – There Is No Death                                              40


 1	the revolution of the earth to the fall of a sparrow. It is
  	mortality only that dies. 
 3	    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. 
 6	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,
 9	this understanding of Truth subordinates the belief in
  	death, and demonstrates Life as imperative in the divine
  	order of being. 
12	    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
15	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
18	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
21	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
24	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
27	as temporal. A sense material apprehends nothing strictly
  	belonging to the nature and office of Life. It conceives
 
   
Unity of Good – There Is No Death                                              41


 1	and beholds nothing but mortality, and has but a feeble
  	concept of immortality. 
 3	    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
 6	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
 9	in it, involves a temporary loss of God, the infinite and
  	only Life. 
  	    Resurrection from the dead (that is, from the belief in
12	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. 
15	    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
18	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
21	error, but through Truth. 
  	    All Life is Spirit, and Spirit can never dwell in its antag-
  	onist, matter. Life, therefore, is deathless, because God
24	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
27	these phenomena appear to go on ad infinitum; but such
  	a theory implies perpetual disagreement with Spirit. 
  
   
Unity of Good – There Is No Death                                              42


1	    Life, God, being everywhere, it must follow that death
  	can be nowhere; because there is no place left for it. 
 3	    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
 6	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. 
 9	    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
12	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
15	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-
18	ditions. No wonder "people were astonished at his doc-
  	trine; for he taught them as one having authority, and
  	not as the scribes." 
21	    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. 
24	    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
27	the immortal, nor the material the spiritual, but wherein
  	true manhood and womanhood go forth in the radiance
 
   
Unity of Good – There Is No Death                                              43


 1	of eternal being and its perfections, unchanged and
  	unchangeable. 
 3	    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,
 6	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. 
 9	    The achievement of this ultimatum of Science, com-
  	plete triumph over death, requires time and immense
  	spiritual growth. 
12	    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
15	not, and on the words of the Master in support of this
  	verity, — words which can never "pass away till all be
  	fulfilled." 
18	    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
21	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
24	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
27	no death, the omnipresent Spirit which knows no matter.
 
                                                                                                     44      





                 PERSONAL STATEMENTS 

 1	    Many misrepresentations are made concerning my
  	doctrines, some of which are as unkind and unjust
 3	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
 6	raised thereupon, are vain shadows, repeating — if the
  	popular couplet may be so paraphrased —  

  	                     The old, old story,
 9	               Of Satan and his lie. 


  	    In the days of Eden, humanity was misled by a false
  	personality, — a talking snake, — according to Biblical
12	history. This pretender taught the opposite of Truth. 
  	This abortive ego, this fable of error, is laid bare in
  	Christian Science. 
15	    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
18	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
21	the floor], then your eyes shall be opened [you shall be
  	conscious matter], and ye shall be as gods, knowing good
 
   
Unity of Good – Personal Statements                                         45


  1	and evil [you shall believe a lie, and this lie shall seem
  	truth]." 
 3	    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
 6	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
 9	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
12	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
15	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
18	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
21	limitation, until it finally dies in order to better itself. 
  	But Truth never dies, and death is not the goal which
  	Truth seeks. 
24	    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
27	non-existent. It has no origin or existence in Spirit, im-
  	mortal Mind, or good. Matter is not truly conscious; and
 
   
Unity of Good – Personal Statements                                         46


 1	mortal error, called mind, is not Godlike. These are the
  	shadowy and false, which neither think nor speak. 
 3	    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
 6	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
 9	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
12	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
15	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
18	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. 
21	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
24	God. This ego was in the earthquake, thunderbolt, and
  	tempest. 
  	    The Pharisees fought Jesus on this issue. It furnished
27	the battle-ground of the past, as it does of the present. 
  	The fight was an effort to enthrone evil. Jesus assumed
 
   
Unity of Good – Personal Statements                                         47


1	the burden of disproof by destroying sin, sickness, and
  	death, to sight and sense. 
 3	    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
 6	exist is God and His idea.
 
                                                                                                     48    





                                 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. 
 
   
Unity of Good – Credo                                                                49


 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?
 
                                                                                                    55   





      SUFFERING FROM OTHERS' THOUGHTS

1	    Jesus accepted the one fact whereby alone the rule of
  	Life can be demonstrated, — namely, that there is
 3	no death. 
  	    In his real self he bore no infirmities. Though "a man
  	of sorrows, and acquainted with grief," as Isaiah says of
 6	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." 
 9	    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
12	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
15	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
18	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
21	conviction, "Yet in my flesh shall I see God;" that is,
  	Now and here shall I behold God, divine Love. 
 
   
Unity of Good – Suffering From Others’ Thoughts                      56


 1	    The chaos of mortal mind is made the stepping-stone
  	to the cosmos of immortal Mind. 
 3	    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
 6	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." 
 9	    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
12	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,
15	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. 
18	    Prophets and apostles suffered from the thoughts of
  	others. Their conscious being was not fully exempt from
  	physicality and the sense of sin. 
21	    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
24	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
27	mental conditions as ingratitude, lust, malice, hate, con-
  	stitute the miasma of earth. More obnoxious than
 
   
Unity of Good – Suffering From Others’ Thoughts                      57


 1	Chinese stenchpots are these dispositions which offend
  	the spiritual sense. 
 3	    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-
 6	pears it foresees the impending doom and foretells the
  	pain. Man's refuge is in spirituality, "under the shadow
  	of the Almighty." 
 9	    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
12	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
15	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
18	is earth's Bethel in stone, — its pillow, supporting the
  	ladder which reaches heaven. 
  	    Suffering was the confirmation of Paul's faith. Through
21	"a thorn in the flesh" he learned that spiritual grace was
  	sufficient for him. 
  	    Peter rejoiced that he was found worthy to suffer for
24	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
27	wipes away all tears. 
  	    The only conscious existence in the flesh is error of some
 
   
Unity of Good – Suffering From Others’ Thoughts                      58


 1	sort, — sin, pain, death, — a false sense of life and happi-
  	ness. Mortals, if at ease in so-called existence, are in their
 3	native element of error, and must become dis-eased, dis-
  	quieted, before error is annihilated. 
  	    Jesus walked with bleeding feet the thorny earth-road,
 6	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
 9	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. 
12	    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-
15	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." 
18	    Thus the absolute unreality of sin, sickness, and death
  	was revealed, — a revelation that beams on mortal sense
  	as the midnight sun shines over the Polar Sea.
 
                                                                                                     59     
 



                THE SAVIOUR'S MISSION 

 1	    If there is no reality in evil, why did the Messiah come
  	to the world, and from what evils was it his purpose
 3	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
 6	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
 9	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
12	of Mary. 
  	    Salvation is as eternal as God. To mortal thought
  	Jesus appeared as a child, and grew to manhood, to suffer
15	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,
18	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
21	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
 
   
Unity of Good – The Saviour’s Mission                                        60


 1	Life. From such thoughts — mortal inventions, one and
  	all — Christ Jesus came to save men, through ever-present
 3	and eternal good. 
  	    Mortal man is a kingdom divided against itself. With
  	the same breath he articulates truth and error. We say
 6	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
 9	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,
12	and death as realities. 
  	    With the tongue "bless we God, even the Father; and
  	therewith curse we men, who are made after the simili-
15	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
18	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. 
21	    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
24	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,
27	which sees not God. This false sense of substance must
  	yield to His eternal presence, and so dissolve. Rising
 
   
Unity of Good – The Saviour’s Mission                                        61


 1	above the false, to the true evidence of Life, is the resur-
  	rection that takes hold of eternal Truth. Coming and
 3	going belong to mortal consciousness. God is "the same
  	yesterday, and to-day, and forever." 
  	    To material sense, Jesus first appeared as a helpless
 6	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
 9	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
12	of divine Life. Human perception, advancing toward
  	the apprehension of its nothingness, halts, retreats, and
  	again goes forward; but the divine Principle and Spirit
15	and spiritual man are unchangeable, — neither advancing,
  	retreating, nor halting. 
  	    Our highest sense of infinite good in this mortal sphere
18	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
21	flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God."  (Galatians
  	ii. 20.) 
  	    Christian Science is both demonstration and fruition,
24	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
27	contrite heart soonest discerns this truth, even as the help-
  	less sick are soonest healed by it. Invalids say, "I have
 
   
Unity of Good – The Saviour’s Mission                                        62


 1	recovered from sickness;" when the fact really remains,
  	in divine Science, that they never were sick. 
 3	    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
 6	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
 9	 — 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. 
12	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. 
15	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. 
18	    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-
21	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
24	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. 
27	    Mary had risen to discern faintly God's ever-presence,
  	and that of His idea, man; but her mortal sense, revers-
 
   
Unity of Good – The Saviour’s Mission                                        63


 1	ing Science and spiritual understanding, interpreted this
  	appearing as a risen Christ. The I AM was neither buried
 3	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
 6	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
 9	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.
 
                                                                                                     64




                                   SUMMARY 

 1	    All that is, God created. If sin has any pretense of
  	existence, God is responsible therefor; but there is
 3	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
 6	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
 9	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
12	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. 
15	    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
18	Deity knoweth, nor escape from identification with what
         dwelleth in the eternal Mind.
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