ALL error—the opposite of the truth—is suppositional. Mortals seem first to accept error as real, and then slowly abandon their false position for the truth. Moreover, as the truth is accepted, they perceive that the once seemingly real error was nothing but a supposition, and that even at the height of its supposed influence or power it had no reality or existence except in belief. How impossible it would be to-day for us to believe that the world is flat and that the sun goes around the earth, or that anyone who sailed far enough would fall off the edge of the world! All this was once accepted as true; yet it was never anything but supposition, supposition which, as we see, was merely the reverse of the truth.
Education has similarly transformed religious thought, and some of the errors once accepted by most of the religious denominations are now generally recognized as suppositions. Satan was formerly believed to be as real as God, and hell as real as heaven. As ignorance gives way to knowledge and the all-presence and all-power of God are understood, it is seen that Satan, so called, can indeed neither be real, present, nor have power. Hell, as a place of eternal punishment, has also largely gone; and heaven is recognized as a mental, spiritual condition, not a place. Some of the characteristics of hell are still attached to our beliefs about human life, which seems full of discordant evils decidedly the opposite of what we hope for in heaven. Sin, suffering, poverty, sorrow, and death still seem to be a very real hell in the experiences of mortals.
Christian Science brings the assurance that only the ignorant suppositions of so-called mortal mind can seem to give reality to any error, however disturbing its claims or whatever material sense testimony may declare in relation to it. It goes farther than this, for it shows us how to distinguish definitely between error, which is held in mortal mind, and the truth, which is the expression of divine Mind. Through reason, revelation, and proof we can arrive at the right idea of all things. We know that God is All and is Truth, and therefore that Truth alone has existence or reality, and that it must be eternal, harmonious, and good, the unchangeable characteristics of God. What a vision of immediate salvation lies before us when we firmly grasp that Truth is all, and only good! Evil, therefore, cannot be true; it must be a lie.
