In her book "Miscellaneous Writings" Mary Baker Eddy gives this imperative instruction concerning the practice of Christian Science (p. 334): "You must find error to be nothing: then, and only then, do you handle it in Science." Ignoring error is not finding it to be nothing. The recognition that error is nothing requires a positive, demonstrable understanding of Truth. One can prove the nothingness of error only in proportion to his positive conviction of the absolute allness of God, Truth. The Bible represents God as declaring (Isa. 45:5), "I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me." Acknowledging the omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience of God, good, one must logically conclude that there is not a single possibility of an opposite of Him.
One may admit this truth theoretically, but actually to know and to demonstrate it in human experience require a close study of the letter of Christian Science and the living and loving of its spirit. A thoughtless turning away from error without the correlative acknowledgment of the allness, omnipresence, and omnipotence of Truth does not enable one to demonstrate Christian Science. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy says (p. 346), "The nothingness of nothing is plain; but we need to understand that error is nothing, and that its nothingness is not saved, but must be demonstrated in order to prove the somethingness—yea, the allness—of Truth."
No one could logically want to preserve or save error, but one who ignorantly or willfully clings to a belief of pleasure or profit in that which is not spiritually good places himself in such a position. The acknowledgment that God is the only cause and creator and that the true, spiritual man and universe are the only real creation must of necessity include a repudiation of that which appears to erroneous belief to be real.
