CHRISTIAN SCIENCE occupies its distinctive position among the Christian denominations solely because it is reducing to practice the teaching of God's infinitude. While the churches are mainly agreed that this teaching is true, there has been little disposition to apply it literally to the problems of human existence, notwithstanding that only through such application can the kingdom of God be brought to the human consciousness.
If there is anything within the compass of human understanding that is susceptible of practice, it must be the truth about God, since without God man would have no existence. If the truth about God is not practical, it would follow that Deity could never be understood or have tangible existence for mankind. If we are to accept the statement found in the Scriptures and in church creeds, that God is All-in-all, and therefore that good includes all reality, we must naturally conclude that the truth about Him is not only a practical factor in the lives of men, but that it constitutes all that is truly practicable. Inasmuch as human experience daily demonstrates that good alone vanquishes evil, humanity has no choice but to work out its salvation on that basis,—that is, by good thinking and good doing,—and this fact designates a demonstrable knowledge of the allness of God as the one thing needful, and the thing most worthy of human endeavor.
Many earnest thinkers are beginning to question the consistency of teaching in creed or doctrine what they deny in practice. How to accept the evidence of evil that appears to confront one on every hand, without letting go one's belief in the omnipotence of God, gives occasion for serious thought. Many Christians honestly admit the impossibility of reconciling the wickedness and suffering of the human race with an infinitely good God, but scholastic theology ignores this difficulty and asserts the morally inconceivable, namely, that God permits evil to exist and to afflict mankind. Under such teaching one must either lapse into virtual infidelity or blindly worship a concept of Deity that is evil as well as good.
It may be said of Christian Scientists that they do not attempt to reconcile contradictions about the character or government of God or to make evil fit into His plan of creation. They do not acknowledge that there is a creator or a power besides God, therefore they do not acknowledge that evil is a reality. Accepting in all its fulness the Scriptural teaching of God's allness, they find no other logical course but to repudiate unreservedly the supposition that there is an opposite power, intelligence, or presence, despite the testimony which this false supposition would present to those who believe it.
Christian Scientists earnestly desire to follow the great Teacher who, while not closing his eyes to the evils of his time, said, "No man can serve two masters." It is morally impossible for one at the same time to believe both truth and error. One cannot simultaneously stand in opposite positions in moral and spiritual things any more than he can in a physical sense. If we credit evil as having power, we are not wholly on the side of good, though we may persuade ourselves that we believe in an omnipotent God. To argue that evil is as real as good, and consequently as powerful, would deprive one of the only rule whereby evil can be overcome, and would be as illogical as to say that errors in a mathematician's work are as real as truth.
The only reasonable or satisfactory method by which to decide this question has heretofore been largely avoided, and that is to put the doctrine of God's allness to the test of actual practice. Jesus said, "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." This teaching is useless if not practical, but if it is practical, there is nothing to prevent evil from being destroyed in human consciousness, except the unwillingness of mortals to forsake it.
According to general religious teaching, if we are to enter heaven, the time approaches when we must take our stand on God's absolute supremacy, since in heaven there can be no power but good. If we believe this will be possible for us at some time in the future, there can be nothing in the truth of things to prevent our taking that stand in the present; for if evil has no power in heaven to resist our loyalty to the allness of God, it has no power to resist it on earth. It is certain that until humanity begins to declare for and to practise the infinite sovereignty of good, and to cease submitting to evil, it will never begin to rise out of its evil experiences.
The difficulty is that mortals have been taught to look upon evil as having power over them independently of their own thoughts, whereas Christian Science shows evil to be but the illusion of believing that something besides God and His manifestation is real. What appear to mortals as disease, sin, and death, are but the phenomena of their own false beliefs. If they understood the infinity of good sufficiently to correct these false beliefs, the consequent sense-illusions would disappear, and in their stead would be seen the transcendent glory of divine reality.
To dispute the position of Christian Science merely upon the ground of material evidence is illogical, because this evidence is identical with error's claims and is but their objective state. If evil is not true, its so-called evidence is not true. According to all physical testimony and human reason Lazarus was dead, whereas Jesus proved to the contrary that he was alive. He made manifest the evidence of life, thereby proving the physical evidence of death to have been false. Understanding the omnipresence of God, he knew that a sick man or a dead man was utterly impossible as a fact of existence. Instead of submitting to the material evidence, he brushed it aside as unbelievable and untrue. If we would follow the Christ, we must adopt the Master's attitude, and instead of contending that evil is real because we can see it, we should begin to deny and destroy this false testimony. Thus, and only thus, can we learn the practical meaning of the allness of God as the saving truth from all error.
The correlative of the infinity of good is, obviously, the nothingness of evil. Mrs. Eddy says, "Since God is All, there is no room for His unlikeness" (Science and Health, p. 339). If we declare that God is not All, it means that we are making room in our consciousness for what is not His likeness, and this opens the door for evil to enter one's experience. It is high time that Christians realized the importance not only of serving God alone, but of acknowledging Him alone in all their ways. It should be seen as self-evident truth that that which accepts the claims of evil, which obeys evil, and suffers because of it, is not and never was God's image and likeness. It is not the Mind which was in Christ Jesus that acknowledges evil to be something, but that false element in human consciousness which opposes Truth and would enthrone Beelzebub as a power for good.
It should be apparent that mortals must stop giving place to what they call evil, and refuse to accept its evidence, if they desire to overcome it. If it is not possible to do this, Christianity is a farce and a failure, since to make the destruction of evil humanly possible, or in other words to make the demonstration of the allness of God humanly possible, is the sole reason for Christianity. Granting this point, the whole case is proved for Christian Science, and it only remains for mankind to put this truth into operation in their lives.
We should not lose sight of man's inherent ability always to do what is right. Truth bestows upon every man the power to be true under all circumstances, and one can exercise this power, in so far as he understands it, with the same certainty that he uses his knowledge of mathematics. Because it is true that good is supreme, that Love is infinite, that Life is forever manifesting itself, it is possible for one so to lay hold of these truths as to make them the guiding influence in their experience. Jesus gave practical evidence that the all-power of God means, literally and absolutely, the no-power of evil, and his example remains for all time the pattern for Christians.
The word practice as defined by lexicographers means the systematic exercise of what one holds to be true, the actual putting into effect of what is accepted as a theory. To practise the allness of God means the systematic application of that truth in one's daily affairs. Unless one is doing this, he is either ignorant of the truth or is too apathetic to protest against the claims of evil. If one honestly desires to hold to the truth that only good is real, he should apply it whenever or wherever an opposite to good would assert itself to him; otherwise he will let that have power over him which he knows is not God. To affirm the truth mentally is only the beginning of one's work; we must also affirm the truth practically, letting our lives bear witness to the non-existence of aught but good. The Scripture says, "To depart from evil is understanding."
In his mental struggle in the wilderness Jesus realized that his life would be a failure if he acknowledged any power, or anything to be desired, besides good; and other Christians cannot hope to succeed by any less absolute attitude, or by any less correct estimate of the real facts of being. The belief that there is life, intelligence, and substance in matter is the fundamental error of mortal existence, and we must either deny it as the Master did, or fall down and worship that false belief by acknowledging its claims. What one thinks of God is always the determining factor in his character, and decides his ultimate failure or success. As mankind perceive that their freedom from evil must come through their own individual practice of good, they will recognize the vital necessity of thinking rightly about these things. On page 167 of Science and Health we read, "Our proportionate admission of the claims of good or of evil determines the harmony of our existence,—our health, our longevity, and our Christianity."
When evil seems to rise up in one's consciousness as error of temperament or disposition, when it asserts itself to us as sin in others, when in any form it claims to be present to the eye or ear, what is the right thing to do? How should one think in such cases? Should we take the side of evil or the side of good? One does not need to be a Christian Scientist to appreciate the logic of these questions. The necessity of human salvation presses home the question, and will continue to press it home, as to what one should do when confronted, subjectively or objectively, by what men call evil. To be radically truthful we should do as Jesus did and declare evil to be a lie, and thus looking through its deception and falsity we would come to see that good reigns everywhere. There is nothing in the essential fact of things to prevent this course from being as sensibly practical as the mortal belief in error; and its influence upon the human consciousness, if carried to its ultimate possibilities, would extinguish all sense of an unlikeness to God.
The fact that a good thought will always destroy an evil thought, and thus forestall a consequent evil act, shows the prime importance of systematically cultivating the habit of good thinking. To think good all the time is the only possible antidote for evil; and as the power to think good is the heritage of all men, so the power to banish the dread nightmare of evil is theirs if they seek it; but they must awaken to the truth of being,—the allness of God and the nothingness of evil. Evil cannot maintain its claim when met by the practice of the divine attributes; it flees before the touch of actual goodness, and before nothing else.
It is obvious that the right way to think about evil is the only right way to act about it. If evil is nothing in theory it should be nothing in practice; that is, it should be treated as unreal in both cases. That the allness of God is demonstrable Christian truth is the position taken by Christian Scientists, and the world will naturally look to them for evidence of its practicality; and to that end good alone, in all its qualities, must possess one's thought and decide one's actions.
This does not mean that we need to be taken out of the world, but that we shall keep ourselves from believing in and obeying its sense of evil. Mrs. Eddy pointed out the only safe course for all Christians in her well known injunction, "Forget not for a moment, that God is All-in-all—therefore, that in reality there is but one cause and effect" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 154). This was said to those who are still in the world, who are daily meeting its problems and temptations; therefore it is humanly possible to keep this truth uppermost and undermost in all our thoughts. It was to just such men as are here today, and under just such circumstances, that the Master, the most practical religious teacher the world has known, said, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." Because God is everywhere it is possible for a man to be good everywhere, and this truth all can practise.
