CHRISTIAN SCIENCE has come to deliver mankind from all evil; for it has come proclaiming the ever present power of God, good. Men have often prayed to God for freedom from wrong; but they have prayed —and then have turned to human means and methods to win the deliverance from evil which they have been afraid God either would not or could not bring to them. With a faith divided between good and evil it is scarcely strange that results have frequently been a yet larger sense of evil. Even though men may have believed they have been protected by the use of material ways and means from that which was wrong and disastrous, this has been but a belief of temporary security; for the good which claims to be in matter is ever evanescent, and any endeavor to find lasting good therein can only result in final discomfiture.
The radical nature of Christian Science, declaring as it does for complete reliance at all times on God, good, seems very revolutionary to the so-called carnal or mortal mind, depending as the latter ever does on mundane methods. When Christian Science is presented to men they therefore often resist and complain, wondering and questioning as to why they cannot take all they have before trusted along with it. Even Christian Scientists sometimes fail to see the total impossibility of uniting the human and the divine in their methods if they are to gain unmixed good. Results will always contain the qualities that are found in their causes, and an attempt to mix that which is of God, good, with what is of matter, evil, will inevitably produce a house divided against itself, which cannot stand.
Jesus tells us plainly that we cannot serve God and mammon. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 445), in giving advice to the teachers of Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy emphasizes this when she says: "Teach the dangerous possibility of dwarfing the spiritual understanding and demonstration of Truth by sin, or by recourse to material means for healing. Teach the meekness and might of life 'hid with Christ in God,' and there will be no desire for other healing methods." It should be readily admitted that if one be conscious of possessing a perfect method, he will certainly have no wish to turn to that which is illusive and transitory, even though it promise temporary aid. Always, then, we should be strengthening our trust in and understanding of that good which includes all power.
