The excuse sometimes proffered for human weaknesses and peccadillos is, "Oh, it doesn't amount to anything. If I never do anything worse than that, I shall be all right." In other words, because one does not commit any of the so called "cardinal sins," keeps within the pale of human law, his lesser sins are considered quite pardonable. Divine law, however, is inexorable, and classes wrong-doing, in whatever degree, as sin, and those who indulge in it as transgressors of the law. To love God supremely and one's neighbor as one's self is to keep the commandments on which "hang all the law and the prophets;" but there is no greater or lesser degree of offense, for the apostle James declares, "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all." This he sagely follows up by the counsel, "So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty."
So, too, in Christian Science, we sometimes find a tendency to cling to old beliefs, and to class sickness according to medical rulings, as major or minor, as of a greater or lesser degree of difficulty to heal; and so doing we are likely to err in one of two directions. To disregard the warning which should serve to make us alert to the subtle approach of the enemy, is as grievous a mistake on the one hand, as it is on the other hand to be so overcome by fear as to magnify its supposed powers, and by laying elaborate plans for a long and tedious siege concede at the start the difficulty of dislodging it. Every "claim" of sin or sickness is a transgression of divine law, and is to be reckoned with promptly and effectually.
Thus to dispose of the claims of evil is to be in accord with the Master's teaching and method, for we read again and again that "he healed them all," and healed them of "every sickness and every disease." We have only to recall the specific instances recorded in the gospels to appreciate the fact that even in those days certain types of disease were regarded and accepted as incurable until there had come among the people one who hesitated not to "speak the word;" and, lo, the impotent man walked, the lepers were healed, the blind saw, the deaf heard, and the dumb spake, and even those whom the world called dead were restored to their loved ones. And all this because, as Mrs. Eddy points out, "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick" (Science and Health, p. 476).
