IN the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 205), Mrs. Eddy writes, "God created all through Mind, and made all perfect and eternal." And in the very next sentence she asks, "Where then is the necessity for recreation or procreation?" Her pronouncement of truth is one of the greatest ever made; her question, one of the most searching ever asked of mankind.
As it is understood in Christian Science, creation is not an effect which has been produced by God at some point in time, or over a period of time. To put it somewhat differently, God, the eternal and infinite One, did not decide, after the manner of men, that creation was a necessity, and then proceed to bring it into existence. That is not at all how creation is viewed in Christian Science, for such a view is based on an entirely erroneous concept of the real nature of God. If the concept which Christian Science gives of God, namely, that He is infinite Mind, be accepted, then the correct view of creation is readily obtained.
God is Mind,—infinite and perfect Mind. Creation, then, must be the expression of this divine Mind, and is therefore infinite and perfect. And how, more particularly, does Mind express itself; how can Mind express itself? In one way, and in one way only,—in ideas, in spiritual ideas. Thus creation, the real creation of God, consists entirely of perfect spiritual ideas. This being so, what is to be said of the material creation, the so-called creation which appears to be cognized by the material senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell? Without hesitancy Christian Science declares it unreal, a false or illusory sense of creation; and the material senses which testify to it, it holds to be entirely unreliable.
