IN the book of Genesis we find the promise made to Noah that "seedtime and harvest" should never cease. We also read in the first chapter of Genesis, which gives a spiritual account of creation, that tree and herb shall bring forth seed and fruit each after its kind. Nor is this law of reproduction limited to the physical, for we find Christ Jesus applying it metaphysically when he says that a good tree does not and can not bear evil fruit, or an evil tree good fruit. This law and order has been recognized by natural science and has been named "conformity to type," which in the Master's words would mean that men do not "gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles."
In the first account of creation, which presents the divine idea of all things, we find no mention of evil, the account closing with this statement: "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." To this declaration Christian Science holds, whatever the evidence presented by material sense, and its students learn that nothing is real which does not conform to its spiritual standard. The "scientific statement of being," on page 468 of Science and Health, tells us that "Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal." These few words of our inspired Leader mark the sharp distinction between Christian Science and the generally accepted beliefs of mankind, whether these are religious, scientific, or philosophical. Apart from Christian Science good and evil are both believed to be real, and if we draw our conclusions from materiality, evil would seem more real than good. It is believed that a vicious person may contaminate many who are good, and that one who is diseased may affect those, who are well; but few believe that association with a virtuous person can change the characters of the ill-disposed, or that the so-called law of contagion can bring health to the sick by association with those who are well. On the contrary, evil is held to be positive and good regarded as negative.
Even Christian Science does not claim to accomplish "many mighty works" until the belief in matter and material law yields to spiritual understanding. In other words, so long as mortals cling to a counterfeit of spiritual reality, with its asserted law and order, they will see the fruitage of their own beliefs, though they may stubbornly contend that these are divinely inflicted penalties. To illustrate: the assiduously sown beliefs of disease, like the tares of Jesus' parable, have their seedtime and harvest, with baneful continuity, until spiritual sense comes to show that error is unreal and temporal; then for it there is no longer seedtime or harvest. For long centuries mankind has been sowing the seeds of evil, all springing from the belief in a mind separate from God,—a belief that man is material rather than spiritual, and that the lusts of the flesh are his proper inheritance. Out of this have come, as the apostle tells us, "wars and fightings," and these will continue, perhaps intermittently, until the Science of God's creation is seen and accepted. Then will the bow of promise shine out upon the cloud of mortal belief and tell of the covenant between God and man, tell us that no flood of error can ever destroy that which He creates. It is true that every mortal concept of God and man will be subjected to the severest tests, for all that is not the product of divine Mind must be given up; but the divine idea remains forever perfect, and when it is grasped through divine Science all sorrow is turned into joy.
