THE word "belief" is often used in the teaching of Christian Science to designate evil. Indeed, we begin to see something of the falsity of evil when we gain a sufficient understanding of God, good, and His allness to affirm with conviction that evil is nothing more than a mistaken belief. But we have to progress further, to the point where we realize with some measure of spiritual understanding that there is in Truth's universe and man no belief. God, Mind, is infinite, and this infinite intelligence forever knows its own allness, wherein is man, who as Mind's reflection also knows. Neither divine Mind nor its reflection, man, ever believes.
But in the suppositional realm of material thought, which is mortal mind's misconception of life, creation, and man, belief seems to play an important role. For instance, on page 155 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy uses several times the phrase "general belief" to indicate beliefs held by a majority of mortals.
She says, "When the sick recover by the use of drugs, it is the law of a general belief, culminating in individual faith, which heals" (ibid., p. 155). And further she observes, "When the general belief endorses the inanimate drug as doing this or that, individual dissent or faith, unless it rests on Science, is but a belief held by a minority, and such a belief is governed by the majority."
