"Mortal existence is an enigma. Every day is a mystery. The testimony of the corporeal senses cannot inform us what is real and what is delusive." Thus writes Mrs. Eddy on page 70 of Science and Health. Throughout the Scriptures as well we find many statements similar in character, and some intimations that spiritual reality is a mystery to the human mind; but there are also unequivocal promises that through the understanding of divine Truth the veil will be removed, and we shall see, face to face, God and His idea. Christ Jesus said to his disciples, "It is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven;" in other words, the things of God's kingdom would not seem mysterious or incomprehensible to them when they understood the operation of spiritual law, which sets free from sin, disease, and death.
With its age-long perversity, the carnal mind has clung to mystery, has embodied it in its religious rites and creeds, and has winked at the attempts of mortals to solve the problems of existence by means of sorcery, necromancy, and similar falsities of mortal belief, all of which when pursued tend to intensify the belief of life in matter, with its attendant evils. There are very few who at the start grasp the import of Mrs. Eddy's teachings, when she proceeds to uncover "the mystery of iniquity,"—to use Paul's phrasing,— and who are willing to face fearlessly the issues involved in exposing and proving powerless the occultism which would, if unchecked by truth, undermine the very foundations of society. Outsiders, and sometimes beginners in Christian Science, fail to see that whenever and wherever a pure monotheism was maintained in human history, warnings and denunciations against sorcery were coincident with its high moral and spiritual teaching.
The children of Israel had great need to throw off all belief in the witchcraft of Egypt, which doubtless clung to them after they had escaped from the land itself; and Moses, knowing the impossibility of blending this witchcraft with a pure religion, forbade its practice and solemnly warned his people against the nations around them that dealt in sorcery and necromancy. Had they not proved, during the plagues in Egypt and at the Red Sea, the utter powerlessness of these delusions to oppose the fiat of omnipotent Truth?
