THE influence of Christian Science upon the human understanding is not to glorify material personality, but to efface it, and so bring to light the true concept of man as spiritual and immortal. This does not mean the extinction, but the salvation, of mankind. It means the elimination from human thought of whatever is baneful and unworthy, and the establishment of all that is good and worthy as the whole truth concerning man. Personal testimony declares of man that he is "of the earth, earthy," that out of his heart proceed evil thoughts, that he begins in sin and ends in corruption. According to the Scriptural record, this embodiment of error was condemned at the beginning, and throughout its career has only continued to develop more evil. It is not strange, then, that Jesus should say to his disciples, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself;" for except material selfhood is denied, that is, forsaken, spiritual man, the likeness of God, cannot appear, and the mission of Christ is of none effect.
Christian Scientists find special significance in this injunction of the Master, for it substantiates Mrs. Eddy's teaching of the unreal nature of material man and things, and the sole reality of Spirit, God, and the spiritual universe. Of this we may he sure, that if material personality, so called, possessed of itself any God-derived quality, if it existed as a divine fact, or if there inhered in it anything worthy of love or of preservation, Jesus would not have called for its repudiation as the necessity of Christian discipleship; for his mission was to declare, not to deny, the works of the Father.
Because corporeal man is not of the Father. the divine Principle of being, because mortal belief claims the existence of another life and intelligence than God, it should meet with an effective denial from those who accept the Scriptural teaching that "all things were made by him," and that these things are "very good." Evil, posing as a creator, together with its suppositional offspring, should be given the lie in every Christian's consciousness, — as emphatically and finally as when Jesus pronounced it "a liar, and the father of it." There is indeed no other course by which to overcome it, no other way to make Christianity a life instead of a creed.
