A PERSON receiving an unassembled piece of mechanism accompanied by directions for putting it together would not expect to benefit by its use until all the directions had been followed. Following half of them would be of no benefit. If such implicit following of directions is necessary in order to use a temporal, material contrivance, how much more necessary it is to follow the strict demand which Christian Science makes upon each of its adherents that everything shall be done according to the rules of this Science.
The student of religious history knows that Paul wrote to the Colossian church warning it to beware of those who claimed to teach a higher thought, and that in a letter to Timothy he implored him to keep the teaching he had received pure, untouched by "profane and vain babblings" (I Tim. 6:20). Today some false teachers use such subtle arguments as: "Come to us. We have a short-cut by which you may arrive at the truth without so much self-sacrifice and effort." Indeed, it is characteristic of counterfeit methods claiming to be better and easier than Christian Science that they discard the Manual of The Mother Church and the Lesson-sermon, claim to have a revelation higher than the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, and say that it is not necessary to uncover and deny error, it is only necessary to affirm the truth.
False systems are as old as mortal mind. They vary only in outward trappings from age to age. "Come and worship Baal. Don't be so particular about Moses and his Commandments. You will have a lot better time with us!" Moses, the prophets, and Christ Jesus were all obliged not only to teach their followers the truth about God and His universe, but also to show how this truth corrects the lie that there is more than one creator and one creation. In vivid imagery Jeremiah exposed divergences from the Mosaic revelation of the one God. In the second chapter of his book are such expressions as this (verse 13): "My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water;" and (verse 21), "Yet I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed: how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?" Jeremiah contrasts the spontaneity of a natural fountain springing from an inexhaustible source with the limited, artificial character of a man-made cistern. Again he contrasts the noble vine with its right seed of the Christ message, as it had been given through the prophets, with the "degenerate plant of a strange vine." He and all the inspired teachers of Old Testament times were constantly confronted with the degenerate plant of priestcraft, ecclesiastical politics, and the encroachments of the idolatrous practices of neighboring nations, such as the Ammonites, the Jebusites, and the Perizzites, who boasted of the achievements of their false gods, which were really attributable to the hypnotic use of the human will. All the similes in this chapter point to the fact that imitators and false teachers were attempting to adulterate the pure teachings based on the Ten Commandments.
