"MARY BAKER EDDY, with her usual incisiveness, asserts in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 405), "The pains of sinful sense are less harmful than its pleasures." The force of this statement does not readily appear to mankind, which is accustomed to look upon the pleasures of sense as desirable and harmless, and upon its pains as undesirable and harmful.
To Christian Scientists sin has a much broader significance than to those of other religious affiliations. Sin has usually been considered as comprising only those acts which are contrary to the literal inhibitions of the Decalogue. Some may have broadened this definition to include every act which is within the intent of its inhibitions. This last definition differs from the first only in that it affords an opportunity for difference of opinion as to whether a particular act is sinful, depending upon whether a liberal or a narrow construction of the Decalogue happens to suit the definer.
Once the full significance of the First Commandment, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," begins to be grasped,—namely, that it forbids belief in the existence of anything as real except God, Life, Truth, Love, Mind, the source of all power, —it follows that belief in the existence of matter, or of life and intelligence in matter, with all that statement includes, is sin, and that whatever asserts the belief is sinful. As Mrs. Eddy puts it, on page 468 of Science and Health: "If Soul sinned, it would be mortal, for sin is mortality's self." Consequently, mortal mind, which is at enmity with God, is sin, and its manifestations necessarily are sinful.
