IN Science and Health Mrs. Eddy asks, "Who, that has felt the perilous beliefs in life, substance, and intelligence separated from God, can say that there is no error of belief?" Then she points to the remedy when she adds: "Christian Scientists must live under the constant pressure of the apostolic command to come out from the material world and be separate" (pp.450,451).
Through Christian Science we learn that man is wholly spiritual, and that because his perfect selfhood is as eternally perfect as God, he cannot change from an immortal to a mortal. Mortal existence is as unreal and uncreated as is any hallucination which may temporarily be believed by mankind. Verily, as the apostle declared, "if a man [mortal] think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself;" and if he bears witness of himself as a mortal, his witness is not true. To understand the truth, humanity must indeed "look not at the things which are seen [in mortal consciousness], but at the things which are not seen."
It is from false beliefs and not from reality that humanity needs salvation. As sin, disease, and death are overcome through the truth, mankind is not rescued from any real experience, but only from an unreal state of thought. This is why Christ Jesus came to "bear witness unto the truth." Out of God's great love for the world, and in order that humanity might "know him that is true," the spiritual idea appeared in the realm of material consciousness in such form as it could be best understood, even as a fellow man.
