IN the problem of overcoming hatred, antipathy, resentment, or any one of the myriad forms of error, the first step of the Christian Science student is of course to obey the Scriptural injunction, "First cast out the beam out of thine own eye,"— to lay bare his own heart to the light of Truth, that any lurking error of envy, jealousy, egotism, self-righteousness, self-love, self-ignorance, etc., be not permitted to masquerade as a sense of error in his brother. He tries to realize with reference to himself, that because God is Love, man is loving, before he attempts to prove with reference to his brother, that because God is Love, man is lovable.
If, on the the other hand, the error is on the brother's part, if he has really attempted to injure one, perhaps maliciously, and also perhaps to human sense successfully, or if one is the constant victim of egotism, jealousy, selfishness, sarcasm, etc., the work of the student is to realize that the sin is no part of the individual through whom it is manifested, but is impersonal evil. The student must not, however, permit himself to forget that scientifically, actually, the truth can never be reversed, and that Truth is never less than true.
The subject of a professional hypnotist will do things wholly foreign to his own nature and reason, if he is foolish enough to yield to such a pernicious influence; but to the audience, or to friends, this behavior is in no sense the expression of the man's real individuality. In the same way sin is not the manifestation of any one's true consciousness or his real individuality, but it is the resultant activity of the mesmerism of a false belief that there is pleasure or profit in sin; of the belief of inherited traits, or of any other one of the myriad excuses which mortal mind has for sin.
