IN the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy says (p. 207), "The Science of being repudiates self-evident impossibilities, such as the amalgamation of Truth and error in cause or effect." On the same page she continues: "There is but one primal cause. Therefore there can be no effect from any other cause, and there can be no reality in aught which does not proceed from this great and only cause." From this luminous statement of the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science at least three conclusions may be deduced, namely, that the Science of being separates Truth from error, that it rejects impossibilities, and that it reveals the unity of cause and effect.
Let us examine these to see what light they throw on the problems of our daily life. In the first place, we are taught by Christian Science how to separate Truth from error by a proper understanding of cause and effect. When we come to see all cause and effect as mental, not physical, as Christian Science shows them to be, we shall also see that it is only as false consciousness that evil claims to exist, and that it is therefore wholly problematical. In other words, evil can be stated only in terms of mortal mind, so called; it has no existence in divine Mind. We shall also see that a change of thought will free human consciousness through the truth, destroying error, sin, and death. Truth, Spirit, Life, God, and His idea, are distinct from the human concept of them.
It is self-evident that Truth and its so-called opposite, error, cannot both be primal, any more than both of them can be true. We see, then, from the operation of the simple law of the oneness of cause, that Truth must of necessity exist; and that from the very necessity of its existence, Truth must be primal. If error were primal, then there would be no way of proving it false. Happily for our peace of mind, as well as for our logic, a negative never can be the primal. There must be first that of which error is the negation, or opposite; in other words, that about which it tells the lie.
