On page 252 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy we read, "A knowledge of error and of its operations must precede that understanding of Truth which destroys error, until the entire mortal, material error finally disappears, and the eternal verity, man created by and of Spirit, is understood and recognized as the true likeness of his Maker." This shows that when an effort is made to understand Truth, exposure of the error which is claiming to hide Truth is also necessary. Right effort, however, is always directed to the understanding of Truth, and is never an effort of the so-called human mind to expose or understand error through its own thinking. The more Truth is understood the clearer it becomes that the operations of error are synonymous with the operations of the mortal mind; therefore the more impossible does it become to descend to the use of the mortal mind.
On page 233 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" Mrs. Eddy, elucidating the above quotation from Science and Health, writes. "Is there not something to watch in yourself, in your daily life, since 'by their fruits ye shall know them,' which prevents an effective watch?" This makes it clear that one has to watch and learn of the errors in what suggests itself as one's own thinking, and not search for, or watch, error in one's neighbors. What, then, is the seeming power behind error? Why does the man in the street fall before the attack of error? Christian Science shows that it is due to belief in the human mind, finiteness, or powers many. The cure, then, is the recognition of God infinite Principle, divine Mind, as the only power. But the man in the street thinks he is recognizing God as the only power all the time. His surrender to error is due, therefore, to his ignorance of his own errors and their operation.
When error seizes a student of Christian Science, then, it is because, though he may have recognized the powerlessness of the errors binding the man in the street, there are other more hidden errors claiming to operate of which he, in turn, is ignorant. He thinks that he is worshiping the one God as the only power, just as the man in the street believes that he is doing, but "by their fruits ye shall know them." and if the fruit is error of any sort, there still remains some trust in the human mind. To gain a further understanding of error and of its operations, one does not spend time studying and denying the errors which he already knows to be powerless. No Christian Scientist in central Africa, for instance, would retire to his hut and deny the power of a wooden god. He might, for the sake of others, use his understanding of Truth to deny the belief in this power. He can do this, however, only because he already knows for himself that a carved piece of wood has no power. What the student of Christian Science wants to find out about error is the extent of the belief in powers apart from God in himself, in his daily life.
