If the question were asked, "What has been the most distinctive fact of human history?" great surprise would not be awakened if the answer were, "Its contradictions;" for they have been ever present and profound. More than this, they have always been attended by disharmony and distraction, disaster and death. Truths and untruths, rights and wrongs, nobilities and ignobilities—what a saddening confusion their companionship has made of all the past. And yet pitiful as is this fact, it has been far less ill-begetting than has the general acceptance of these inconsistencies as natural and inescapable. The consent with Emerson that "evil is good in the making;" the philosophy that light and darkness, the ideal and the unidcal, the true and the false, are alike real and belong together as coordinate parts of a system of things which the"oversoul"has consented to, if not created; that inherently life means not peace, but war—surely no suggestion of the serpent has wrought greater havoc than these.
The beginnings of the acceptance of the asserted naturalness of this anomaly are very familiar. We see that growth is followed by decay, that night succeeds the day, that poverty and wealth have ever appeared to dwell together. These and kindred antagonisms are mated in human experience, and the conclusion is easily reached by the many that they are normal and inseparable. This conclusion is especially nourished by the association of good and evil, right and wrong in common thinking. One may begin the day with a pure ideal, an unselfish purpose, and perchance within an hour find himself entertaining a sensual thought or planning to profit by another's loss! The average mental record even in the instances of earnest Christians is, as we all know, little more than a jumble of contradictions, and yet, quite regardless of this medley, there stands the word which no true follower of Christ can question, and which saith, "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all."
In declaring the truth of the perfection of God, the source of all being; that in His nature, His law, His kingdom, there is and can be no contradiction, Christian Science has reaffirmed the Christianity of Christ Jesus, and pronounced against the theological chaos of the centuries. Further, in the hearts of unnumbered believers there has begun the reign of that harmony which was heard "when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 372) Mrs. Eddy writes, "How, then, in Christianity any more than in Christian Science, can we believe in the reality and power of both Truth and error, Spirit and matter, and hope to succeed with contraries?" This question is of supreme import to religious progress. The perception of the oneness and perfection of spiritual being—this, and this alone, supplies a ground of hope for human redemption. This alone gives assurance of an end to the strifes of dualism, the hitherto ceaseless conflicts of world history.
