Christian Science is restoring pure Christianity. How is the restoration taking place? Mrs. Eddy answers the question indirectly on page 152 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" when she writes, "The restoration of pure Christianity rests solely on spiritual understanding, spiritual worship, spiritual power."Have spiritual understanding, spiritual worship, and spiritual power, then, been absent from Christianity? Yes, to a great extent. For through many centuries men but imperfectly understood the truth underlying the Christianity of Christ Jesus—the truth about God, man, and the universe. Entertaining erroneous beliefs about God, how could they worship Him aright? And harboring in thought erroneous beliefs about the real man, how could men bring out in their lives the strength, the purity, the goodness, which belong to him as the image and likeness of God?
Christian Science emphasizes the necessity for a clear understanding of the nature of God, if Christianity is to be restored to its primitive purity and strength. Men must know Him as infinite good—as infinite Life, Truth, and Love. There can be no limiting of Deity. And since God is infinite Life, naught the opposite of Life has any real existence. Since He is infinite Truth, naught but spiritual truth has any reality— error does not exist. Since He is infinite Love, the opposite of Love has no true being—evil is a delusion, an illusion, a lie. Christian Science is insistent that these truths shall be acknowledged as a primary and fundamental basis for Christian living.
Unless men understand these truths about God and hold to them, they cannot worship Him aright; they cannot do rightful homage to Him. Moreover, their living will be vitiated to the extent that they entertain erroneous beliefs about Him. Think how the error that God is not wholly good, that He knows both good and evil, has affected the human race. It has played havoc with faith in God; for how could one trust Him unreservedly, believing that He knows evil, or of evil? It has weakened, yes, stultified prayer to God; for who could pray with unalloyed confidence in Him, believing that His power for good is limited? It has weakened men in their resistance to evil; for they have reasoned that if evil is known to God it must be real—then, how futile for them to oppose it! The lives of men, their characters, their influence on the lives of others, are tremendously affected by the beliefs they entertain about God.
