DIRECT and frank opposition to the truth is more easily detected, and thereby more readily counteracted, than are dilatory and hidden methods. Thus it is that the carnal mind's "enmity against God," to which St. Paul refers in his letter to the Romans, often assumes the more subtle form of claiming to evade a clear-cut issue with Truth, attempting thereby to prolong its fabulous existence. By a scientific analysis of the carnal or mortal mind on the basis of divine Mind's allness and mortal mind's nothingness, Christian Science enables its students to become aware of mortal mind's subtle methods, and thereby readily to forestall them. In dealing with error one must constantly keep in thought that it is no part of divine reality, as Christian Science teaches. From the spiritual point of view error is unreal; it is false belief, a lie. This lie, or nonentity, has to be dealt with scientifically, however, because as long as one believes in it as real one is under its claims of affliction and limitation.
Not infrequently, evasion may be found in objections to Christian Science on the part of those ignorant of its teachings. One of these objections consists in the incredulity that a spiritually mental method — as Christian Science treatment avowedly is — can heal physical disease. It must be admitted that if matter were something outside of mortal mentality, such an objection might have to be considered as valid. However, in a plethora of cases, verified by physicians and otherwise, actual practice has proved beyond any doubt that Christian Science does heal so-called physical conditions.
The only conclusion to be arrived at is that matter is not matter in the above conjectured sense. When one reads "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, one will find this point stressed over and over again, as, for example, where the statement is made that matter is but "another name for mortal mind" and "the primitive belief of mortal mind" (pp. 591, 292). In other words, there is no scientifically essential difference between matter and mortal mind; for, as the textbook further declares (p. 293), "Matter and mortal mind are but different strata of human belief," and for that reason matter is altogether a mental claim. Here we have encountered one of the most frequent methods of evasion whereby mortal mind attempts to prolong its own myth.
