IN the realm of religious teaching the unity of a fact with its evidence is a requirement which permits of no substitutions or exceptions. A teacher imparts only what he possesses of belief or knowledge about the subject under consideration. If his premise be based upon false belief, the conclusion, or evidence, is false also; whereas, that concept which originates in fact or knowledge ultimates in evidence which is called the truth. Evidence, then, is seen to be inseparable from its original source, whether that source be fact or fancy.
The history of religion is strewn with the tragic wrecks of systems of worship whose teachers or leaders assumed as facts that which proved to be supposition or mere conjecture. The deluded followers of these religious beliefs, blindly accepting the deduction or evidence resulting from false assumption, suffered the inevitable penalty for belief in the existence of that which never had been. Their sincerity in pinning their faith to a doctrine whose premise was untenable did not protect them from the consequences of their mistake, from being engulfed in the morass of afflictive experiences which constituted the evidence of a false premise.
Concordant conditions proceed from the truth; discordant conditions foretell their own destruction because they announce to all who have ears to hear that they are the evidence, not of the truth, but of error. This indicates the law which ultimates in Christian Science healing. In the allegory beginning on page 430 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, all of the evidence given by "Personal Sense," the plaintiff, is branded as perjury by Christian Science, the attorney for the defense; and when the false nature of the testimony is disclosed because of its dissociation from the truth, the defendant is freed from its ill effects. Perjured testimony has no real connection with facts. When traced to its source, it is disclosed as being the offspring of a lie about the truth, as being separated from the source of the truth, leaving a hiatus, which error, if confronted by the truth, can never effectually bridge over or conceal. Valid evidence is recognized as united with the true source, with the line of unfoldment intact from the cause to the effect, or evidence.
