"You can't sink a ship unless the water gets in," is an expression often heard by the author. In Christian Science it can rightly be said, "You can't manifest discord unless an illusion of error gets into consciousness." This Science teaches that evil, error, discord, or any inharmony is an illusion. It is an illusion because it arises from a material and imperfect concept of creation; whereas in Science creation is spiritual and perfect.
The starting point in Christian Science is the acknowledgment of the allness of God, good. In the first chapter of Genesis we read: "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him. . . . And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good."
With reference to the material concept of creation, the Scriptures liken the illusion of error to a mist: "There went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground" (Gen. 2:6). One dictionary definition of "mist" is "anything which obscures, blurs, or intercepts vision, physical or mental." The material beliefs of sin, sickness, and death, as well as mortal mind qualities such as fear, selfishness, envy, hatred, revenge, anxiety, and the like, are the mental blurs which, if not dealt with scientifically as taught in Christian Science, are made manifest materially or physically. For example, to fear is to identify oneself with the fear and so be made subject to its illusion.
