Many writers have tried, both by argument and ridicule, to oppose the correctness of Christian Science in its claim that sin, disease, and death are human delusions. I have never known a critic of Christian Science to use the word "delusion" in the same sense that the Christian Scientist does, nor indeed in its true etymological sense.
Delusion, as defined by Webster, is "deception from want of knowledge." It is also further defined as "an erroneous view of something which exists indeed, but which has by no means the qualities or attributes ascribed to it." This is the sense in which the term is used in Christian Science, and there is no other definition which conflicts with it. Because Christian Science teaches that the mortal sense of the real tree as it is in fact, is delusive, it by no means follows that a tree is a delusion. The tree is not a delusion, but the human, mortal sense of it is a delusion. Mortal man's knowledge of a tree is short of, or less than, the true, divine knowledge of it as it exists in the realm of eternal Truth. Any knowledge that is less than true is erroneous, and hence delusive to the exact extent of the ignorance with which this knowledge is imbued. That the definition as given is a correct one, is self-evident to every careful thinker; because an ignorant sense of anything, not being the right one, must ascribe to that which is wrongly viewed, qualities that do not really and rightly belong to it. Again, if through ignorance we ascribe qualities to man that do not belong to him, then these wrongly ascribed qualities must be unlike those that really and divinely belong to him, and these unlike qualities must be the very opposite in nature of the real ones. Qualities unlike Life must partake of the nature and essence of sin and disease, which culminate in death. Nothing can be unlike good but evil, and nothing unlike light but darkness. God and His universe, including man, must include all there is or ever will be. Then ignorance of this All must ascribe thereto qualities that do not, in fact or reality, belong to it, and the qualities so wrongly ascribed must be unlike the real ones. If life is a quality of this All, the qualities which ignorance must ascribe to it would be unlike Life; namely, sin, disease, and death; and if life is not a real quality of this All, then the universe and its Creator would be a mere delusion, for without Life there would be nothing, as death is oblivion. Moreover, there could be no delusion if there were no real thing to be deluded about. That which is deluded is that stage of human consciousness which sees the unreal as real, error as fact, as an inherent attribute of Truth.
The first conscious step, and the most important one, out of error or ignorance, is to discern it as such. The origin of ignorance can never be explained, for the wisdom that explains ignorance, explains it away, it can know no ignorance.
