Christian Science is challenging mankind today, probably as it has never been challenged before, as to where it stands morally and spiritually. And there is a great call for this challenge. For what does one find if one examines the consciousness of mankind generally? A pervading sense of uncertainty; a stubborn belief that matter is real, and that material law rules to an enormous extent, if not wholly, the lives of men; a strong belief that evil is as real as good, and that, consequently, evil cannot be prevented from exercising a tremendous influence in the affairs and on the destiny of the human race; and, further, one oftentimes finds a profound ignorance of God, with a proportionately limited faith in good.
That there are great numbers who, although they have not accepted the teachings of Christian Science, yet value good and practice it in their relationships with their fellow men, is cause for deep gratitude. Valuable as their practice of goodness is, however, these still labor disadvantageously under the fallacy that both good and evil are real. And those who believe that the Adam-dream—that life and intelligence are in matter—is true, are in consequence often grievously oppressed by fear. On pages 307 and 308 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy writes: "Above error's awful din, blackness, and chaos, the voice of Truth still calls: 'Adam, where art thou? Consciousness, where art thou? Art thou dwelling in the belief that mind is in matter, and that evil is mind, or art thou in the living faith that there is and can be but one God, and keeping His commandment?'"
Christian Science, then, is challenging the belief that there is more than one Mind, and that this Mind is in matter; it is challenging the belief that matter and evil are real, and that we can be truly conscious of them. It is doing more: it is denying that Mind is in matter and that matter and evil are real. It is denying that there is any reality whatsoever in a so-called material or evil consciousness. And it does this in virtue of the fact, which it reveals, namely, that God is infinite Mind, and that therefore there is only one real consciousness.
