Once when I was feeling burdened, I spoke of several problems with some intensity to a friend. She said quietly: "You know, you should watch your adjectives. You have just described some discords very vividly. But a discord is error, and error is untrue; and that is the only adjective that really applies to error."
How does Christian Science define error? As the ignorant sense of things that believes life, intelligence, and substance exist in matter. My friend's gentle rebuke gave me new insight into the mesmeric action of error, or animal magnetism. Error first deceives us into accepting sentient matter as real, supposedly located where God, infinite Spirit, is not, and then on this false premise builds graven images, evil mental pictures, often through vivid, definitive words. This is mental malpractice— against ourselves!
Mrs. Eddy writes: "What is the cardinal point of the difference in my metaphysical system? This: that by knowing the unreality of disease, sin, and death, you demonstrate the allness of God." She continues in the same paragraph, "The reality of these so-called existences I deny, because they are not to be found in God, and this system is built on Him as the sole cause." Unity of Good, pp. 9-10;
