In human affairs the line of cleavage between Christ and anti-Christ is sharply drawn. For many years Mrs. Eddy through her writings has been teaching those individuals who have been willing to listen, that Christ is "the divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error," as she states in the Glossary of Science and Health (p. 583). According to this definition anti-Christ may be described as that which Christ comes to destroy, namely, "incarnate error," the belief of life in matter assuming a multitude of masks, from the grossest and most, obvious criminal instincts to the subtlest and most occult attempts to spiritualize matter.
Of Christ and anti-Christ it may be said in Scriptural language, "By their fruits ye shall know them," and the present hour in human history is harvesting these fruits, the ones to be gathered joyfully into the barns containing humanity's true possessions, the others to be burned. The worship of Christ, "the divine manifestation of God," naturally magnifies the real man of God's creation, and by reflection upon human affairs raises the standard of human rights, enhances justice, safeguards honor, increases health and happiness, protects holiness by making place for woman side by side with man, and interprets the atonement and the Eucharist as individual experiences which may be enjoyed by every sincere searcher after Truth.
On the other hand the worship of anti-Christ, or "incarnate error," brings with it a belief in the right and might of material organization and attempts to ascribe saving qualities to animate matter instead of to the Christ. This is the reason why ecclesiasticism savors of anti-Christ, because as a material human contrivance it tends to substitute itself for the "divine manifestation of God," and instead of liberating humanity from its sins and its ills, nurtures these very evils under the cloak of the most tenacious forms of tyranny. It is only by breaking the church traditions of the past that progress can be made. Obedience without love saps the life of inspiration. Out of what the carnal mind calls irregularities come the greatest spiritual triumphs. In Zechariah we find this false theology likened to the "filthy garments" worn by the high priest and then taken from him: "And he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him.... Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and stood before the angel. And he answered and spake unto those that stood before him, saying, Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment."
