IN examining the teaching of Christian Science there may arise in the minds of beginners and critics some questions to which, as it appears to them, conceivable and satisfactory answers cannot be given. In this event, it should be remembered that questions to which satisfactory answers cannot be given arise in every philosophy and theology that men have believed in, before the advent of Christian Science, and so, even if such questions were involved in Christian Science, they would not be peculiar to it. Questions that cannot be satisfactorily answered are, in fact, logically and inevitably connected with statements and doctrines which most people freely accept and act upon yet these people do not realize that such is the case. They were brought up to accept certain teachings, and they have never made a thorough examination of the "Hows" the "Whys" and the "Wherefores" that may legitimately be asked about them. When, however, they set themselves to the consideration of the teaching of Christian Science, and find difficulties, they leap at once to the conclusion that this fact interdicts their acceptance of Christian Science. If they had been reared in some other system of belief than that they hold, and had been asked to examine the theology or philosophy which they now believe in, as they are examining Christian Science, they would have found many more "hard questions" to which satisfactory answers could not be given than they find in Christian Science.
For instance: In every system of theology and philosophy (with the exception of Christian Science) which acknowledges God and His sovereignty, there inevitably arises the question of God's fore-knowledge and man's free-will. It is asserted that God is infinitely wise and knows all things that are and that are to be. Yet it is also generally asserted that man is entirely free to do as he chooses. How, then, it may be asked, can God know what a given man is going to do in the future, when the man himself has not made up his mind what he will do, and is perfectly free to do any one or more of several different things. In the attempt to solve this difficulty, unnumbered books have been written, and yet a satisfactory answer has never been given. Respecting this matter Christian Science teaches that, since the real man is an eternal image or reflection of God, he cannot think different thoughts from those of God that he has no will to do things apart from God; that he reflects the divine thought alone. The free-will which mortal man claims to have, whereby he can think and act independently of the will of God, is part of the mortal-mind dream and has no real existence. God is the only original thinker;i.e., nothing comes to pass except of and by His thinking. Since all that really exists or occurs springs from God's thought, it is perfectly clear that He has complete knowledge of all that does or can exist or transpire.
Further, in every system of philosophy or theology there arises the so-called "problem of evil," which may be stated as follows If God is all-power, so that He can do what He will; and all-wise, so that He knows everything that will occur, the results of all His creative acts; and all-Love, so that His every impulse and determination is benevolent, how can He permit evil, or how could He have created man with the capacity to commit sin, and then punish him for doing what He gave him power to do? Thousands of books have been written in the endeavor to answer this question, but success has never been attained outside of Christian Science. This Science teaches that evil, sin, sickness, and death are not realities they are but parts of the mortal-mind dream; God has not created them, they are not in His consciousness, and He does not permit them to be. The only status they have is that of being false conceptions of the human sense, and, when this human sense is replaced by divine understanding, their seeming disappears.
