There has never been a time in the history of the world when the desire to know has been more pronounced than it is today. The world is waking up. It wants to reason. It wants to know the why and wherefore of everything. Why should one be rich and another poor? Why have I the inclination to sin, and why must another suffer in sickness? These and kindred queries are on the lips of many. Where do the questions come from? Certainly not from divine intelligence, for intelligence understands all things and therefore would never question anything. So in all these years, when men have not sought from divine intelligence a solution of their problems, they have really kept on repeating the questions, and very naturally have never received a satisfying reply.
Old theology says that we are not supposed to know, are not sufficiently intelligent to understand; that one suffers and is sick because he is a miserable sinner; and yet though such, that it is his duty to be good! But the questioner says: "How can a miserable sinner be good? When he is good, he is not a sinner; and when he is a sinner, he is not good." Today we are waking up to the inconsistency and unprofitableness of such fallacious thought. We are asking for facts; we are asking to be satisfied, to be filled; we are asking to know what constitutes Life, what constitutes Truth; we are seeking to understand the intelligence which governs the universe; we are sure that we have a right to the tree of knowledge. Otherwise, how can we be expected to live sanely under a lawgiver who we are told is omnipotent good, but who seems to allow omnipotent bad to rule an irresponsible creation?
One thing is certain, that like begets like. If any one held to the theory that a tree could beget a horse, he would find himself in an asylum. But is it not just as absurd to say that good can beget evil, or that life can beget death? In each of these cases there is nothing in the one out of which to beget the other. To believe that opposites can beget opposites, and to hold to that belief, is all there is to the seeming reality of a lie; and Christian Science teaches us how to overcome this false, illegitimate belief by knowing God, —the one Lawgiver, the one Life, the one Mind of the universe.
