0.0 – Christian Science Publication Contents

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                            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 eter...nal 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.
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