Each new step in the unfoldment of Christianity appears to have been attended by persecution. Speaking of reaction to the discovery of Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy writes: "The modern lash is less material than the Roman scourge, but it is equally as cutting. Cold disdain, stubborn resistance, opposition from church, state laws, and the press, are still the harbingers of truth's full-orbed appearing." Science and Health, p. 224;
To believe that persecution—the world's hatred of Truth—no longer exists is a mistake, for so long as mortal thought claims a life apart from God, there will be persecution in human experience. Sin's backlash against its destroyer continues so long as sin—broadly speaking, the belief that life is apart from God—prevails.
The belief in a material basis of good was not only the first error in the allegory of Adam but is a subtle suggestion today. The insistence that there are two factors, the spiritual and the material, denies the scientific truth of the allness of God, Spirit, and the nothingness of anything else.
