"Christian Scientists," writes Mary Baker Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 451), "must live under the constant pressure of the apostolic command to come out from the material world and be separate." The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science here refers to Paul's questions to the Christians in Corinth as found in the sixth chapter of II Corinthians: "What concord hath Christ with Belial?" and, "What agreement hath the temple of God with idols?" And Mrs. Eddy paraphrases the apostle's injunction, "Come out from among them, and be ye separate."
The obedient Christian Scientist is, then, under constant pressure to spiritualize his thinking, to live in accord with his highest understanding of the ever-present and all-knowing God, to whom he bears witness and from whom he is, according to Jesus' precept and proof, inseparable. He is under the continued impulsion to distinguish between the true theology of Jesus and false theologies. He must be ever watchful to see that he is not accepting into his thinking any subtle suggestions of the false theologies which conceive of God as knowing both good and evil and of man as at once material and spiritual. Such theologies are like the false prophets, referred to by Jesus, who come to us in sheep's clothing, but who inwardly are ravening wolves.
The theology which Jesus knew and bequeathed to us is simple, straight, clear, demonstrable. It is an acknowledgment of one God, or Father. It is an affirmation of man's sonship with the Father—that is, his inseparable relationship, as effect, with God, as cause. It includes the healing of sickness, as well as of sin, as a present evidence of that inseparability. "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30) was the unequivocal statement of his conviction. The Master's instantaneous cures, as related in the Gospels, were the proof of the absolute and scientific correctness of his theology.
The theology of Christian Science is the theology of Jesus, restated in this age, defined and implemented for all time. It acknowledges God as one Mind and its infinite manifestation, including spiritual man and the spiritual universe of ideas. It is an affirmation of one perfect cause and its perfect effect, expressed in infinite diversity and individuality. It includes the healing of sickness and sin as evidence of the fact that Jesus' theology is true theology, that is, true knowledge of God.
The Scientist should not forget that in his community, in his office in his school, perhaps even in his home, he is confronted by thinking which has been conditioned by the theological beliefs, generally held, that God is afar off; that He may be communicated with only through a mediator; that He permits human suffering even if one does nothing to deserve it; that man is a mortal, subject to death; that the physical structure conditions the individual and that his capacity to think is incidental to that structure. The Christian Scientist should not forget that he has chosen to stand against all false claims as to the nature of God and man. He is duty-bound to act with courage and dispatch in denying them, so that his affirmations of the truth of man's oneness with God may the more effectively cause the erring human concept to yield to the divine idea.
Just how suggestive are the pretensions of false theology was revealed to one Christian Scientist who had been struggling not too successfully with a chronic respirational difficulty. He was clear, he felt, that matter as such is nothing; that he was dealing with only a false belief. He knew that the good in individual human consciousness has its source and identity in the divine consciousness, Mind. Such knowing had often before lifted him from threatening beliefs of disease and danger. But he found himself making excuses for the chronic discomfort on the ground that many good men have appeared to suffer from one thorn in the flesh even while they have rid themselves of others.
He had made, however, too many fine demonstrations of Mind's omnipresence in the annulling of limitation, incompleteness, and other ailments to be content with such a compromise. A steadfast desire to apply all he understood of Christian Science led him to re-examine Mrs. Eddy's statement in Science and Health (p. 494), "Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need." It came to him that in his interpretation of the familiar and comforting sentence he had been influenced by false theology. He had been accepting it in some degree as a promise that divine Love, God, in some miraculous and mysterious way looks down from heaven above to men below and, seeing the human need, supplies it.
Was this not an instance of denying the vision of Habakkuk (1:13) that God is of "purer eyes than to behold evil"? Did it not assume that God, somewhere afar off, knew of his trouble and that, if sufficiently placated and besought, He would relieve the troubled sense and the uncomfortable body? He must correct such false knowledge of God with the true theology of Christian Science. Divine Love, he knew, is cause, Supreme Being. Man is the effect of that cause, the expression of that Being. Divine Love is expressed in loving. One expresses divine Love, therefore, in proportion as he loves. As one loves and identifies love with its source, God, he receives, by reflection, the healing beneficence of the Love which God is.
The Scientist joyously awakened to the fact that he existed to love—and then to love more—not material persons, places, and things, so called, but the qualities which bear witness to divinity. He put into immediate practice what had unfolded to him. He identified with its source every Christlike quality expressed by himself and his neighbors, every evidence of kindness, generosity of sentiment, faithfulness to the law of good, meekness, poise, spiritual perceptiveness, vitality, enthusiasm, joy. The physical difficulty abated. He was healed. And he realized with gratitude that he now at last understood and had to some extent proved what Mrs. Eddy avows in her work "No and Yes" (p. 30): "God pities our woes with the love of a Father for His child,—not by becoming human, and knowing sin, or naught, but by removing our knowledge of what is not. He could not destroy our woes totally if He possessed any knowledge of them. His sympathy is divine, not human." Love, expressed in confident patience, expectancy, and good works, does indeed remove our knowledge of what is not.
