To regenerate human thought so that it shall no longer call mortal man father, but shall recognize God, Spirit, as the only source of being, was and is the distinct purpose of Christianity. This calls for a change of consciousness such as Jesus indicated when he said, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." That is, mortals must emerge from their material sense of things into the spiritual before they can enter the realm of harmony and immortality. This emergence from error, or a false sense of being, does not involve the death of an individual, as is sometimes taught, but is a mental transformation, a process which begins with one's first glimpse of the truth of spiritual existence.
The only mental means for accomplishing this transformation is made known in Christian Science. On page 99 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes: "Truth has furnished the key to the kingdom, and with this key Christian Science has opened the door of the human understanding. None may pick the lock nor enter by some other door." It is sometimes claimed that the practice of Christian Science is identical with certain mental methods of the so-called human mind, but these methods are totally unlike Christian Science in that they do not acknowledge God to be the only Mind. Human thought asserts an element which is opposed to spiritual being and which it names matter, then forthwith proceeds, in its belief, to endow this element with qualities and activities of an unspiritual sense of mind. This pseudo-mentality, which St. Paul named the carnal mind, is the only source of evil thought and embraces the consciousness of all that is sinful and discordant. In the eighth chapter of his epistle to the Romans he says that "the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." It is obvious, therefore, that whatever proceeds from or is animated by such a mentality is incapable of bringing about a change of consciousness from evil to good.
Although such mental systems claim that disease and sin may in some instances be overcome by the human will, they offer no escape from belief in the human mind itself; hence the benefits accruing from such means are at best but temporary and fictitious, since a cause cannot be preserved without its effect. The use of will-power as a means to overcome evil only serves to increase one's belief in a mind separate from God, for this same will-power is the means by which mortals also commit evil. While the human mind may honestly strive to make itself better by such methods, it is certain that will-power cannot lead mortals into a knowledge of Truth, and a knowledge of Truth is all that destroys error. No matter what its name, the theory which teaches that evil exists as a reality cannot separate itself in practice from that position, and must embody it in its ultimate outcome.
