THERE is common agreement, among those who believe in God, that He knows everything; consequently, that He must be the all-knowing. Christian Science differs from the popular concept of God in that it draws a line of distinction between what God knows and what appears to mortals. So long as the scope of knowledge is in any way governed by mortal opinions and observations the concept of God is bound to be limited. In the middle ages, when the earth was supposed to be flat, God, presumably, was supposed to know a flat earth. To-day, because the earth is supposed to be material, God is presumed to know a material earth!
Christian Science is not based on human opinions and observations, but teaches us to reason in a Christianly scientific manner about the divine nature, basing its conclusions on statements about God's nature found in the Bible. Christian Science classifies that which God knows as spiritual and real,—as the perfect ideas of divine Mind,—and declares that the perfect man, made in God's likeness, is the sum of these ideas.
With his thought thus scientifically clear about spiritual reality, the Christian Scientist denies that which seems to mortals to be real. No one is capable of knowing anything but the perfect ideas of God; for the simple reason that there is in reality nothing else to know. If any one seems to know anything else, he is simply making a mistake, or is holding to a false belief. Thus sin, sickness, and death, not being ideas of God, exist only as false beliefs, appearing to make up a false sense of being which seems true and real to the mortal accepting these beliefs.
