A human philosopher opines that when A meets B there are six concepts of man present. First, there is A's concept of himself; secondly, B's concept of A; thirdly, God's concept of A. Add three similar concepts of B, and you have six. So do mortals reason.
A student of Christian Science once said to me: "When I first heard of Christian Science, I believed there was but one creation, and that it was material. As I studied Christian Science, I began to believe there were two creations, one material and one spiritual. Now after years of study and gaining a better understanding of this Science, I know there is one creation, and that one is spiritual."
Fortunately mankind, in large part, has come to believe there is only one God, one cause. Monotheism is accepted, in theory, by most of the religious adherents on this planet. But humanity is yet far from accepting the logical outcome of one God, namely, one Godlike creation and man. Most men believe that their one God is responsible for such opposite effects as immortal and mortal life, health and sickness, life and death, good and evil.
This illogical thinking results from mortals' lack of understanding of the nature of the one God, in whom they avowedly believe. Christendom has accepted the Scriptural names for God, such as Spirit, Love, Father, and the Almighty. It accepts as God's qualities wisdom, universality, power, and goodness. But when it comes to evaluing the material order of life and mortal man, with all the woes native thereto, it is confounded. In its confusion it casts logic to the winds and attributes all this to God, not knowing how else to account for what, according to the material eye and ear, seems very real.
Christian Science is helping men to see the answer to this dilemma of believing in a good and loving God, who permits, if He does not create, a temporary, discordant, material creation, peopled with perishable, sinful, sick, unsatisfied, contentious mortals. This Science accepts the names for God found in the Bible. It also accepts the Bible teaching that man is God's son, His image, likeness, and witness.
But it does something else, which orthodox Christendom does not generally do. It reasons, without any break in its logic, from the one cause, or God, defined in the Bible as Spirit, to the logical conclusion that man, the effect of God, must be like his cause, and therefore spiritual, regardless of what the material senses may aver to the contrary. Christian Science gives the lie to all temporary, material life and identity because no such effect can be logically attributed to supreme intelligence, God. Man, it declares, is not definable by, nor can he be localized or embodied in, matter. Neither is he the object of conflicting and often destructive material forces. Man is not a bundle of bones, nerves, and cells. Man, as the logical outcome of the Spirit, or Mind, that is God, is God's idea or expression, and partakes of the nature, quality, substance, life, and activity of God. This, Jesus taught and proved.
But what is the explanation of the material order and mortal man? Christian Science reveals that matter, the material universe, mortals, and mortal life are the phenomena not of God's making, but of a false, carnal, or negative material mind, which Paul declares is "enmity against God." This is the one devil, or evil. "The basic error," Mary Baker Eddy states, "is mortal mind" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 405), a simple statement, which we all much need to understand before we can forsake the dualistic belief in two creations, or one badly mixed creation, part good and part evil. Further, this Science shows how you and I can begin to disassociate our sense of life and selfhood from the material sense of life by persistently declaring and realizing the spiritual fact of our natural, continuing oneness, as God's idea, with the Mind that is God. We begin by mentally clinging to, and affirming, the spiritual fact that God is the only Mind, and man is His likeness; by striving to express more consistently the qualities of God, unselfed good, in our daily lives.
The struggle of every mortal is with matter's claim, asserted through the material senses, that one's selfhood is mostly material, if not wholly, and controlled by a material will, selfish motives, impulses, forces, and laws. In the light of Christian Science, he finds that this is not scientifically true, and that with the spiritual ideas of being set forth in the Bible and Science and Health he can prove it is not true. Because matter argues he is a sick mortal, he does not have to agree that he is. Because material sense says he is a sin-enslaved mortal, he does not have to rivet this concept on himself by mentally accepting such a status. He learns consciously to stand in Mind, God, to know that mortal mind and its misconception of cause, creation, and man, in its every aspect, is a substanceless, lifeless, powerless lie. Mortal mind is no more of God's making or knowing than a mathematical mistake is made by, or known to, mathematics. But a misconception, be it simple or universal, is overcome only in one way, namely, by seeing it as a misconception and dissolving it in thought by realizing the fact it would reverse.
If Christendom is to be faithful to its Monotheism and worship the one God, it must obey the master' Christian's words, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind." But how can anyone love God with all his heart if he is dishonoring the effect of God, spiritual man, by accepting as real an unspiritual, material sense of man?
"No man can serve two masters," was Jesus' statement. Yet Christendom has been attempting to worship one God with its lips and two gods—Spirit and matter— with its thoughts. Hence humanity's woes. As we learn to be consistent monotheists in our thoughts and lives, as well as in our words, the fruits of health, happiness, abundance, and heaven for all will increasingly appear. Then the logical conclusion that because there is one God, Spirit or Truth, there can be but one creation, and that spiritual, and one man, and that God's man, spiritual, harmonious, perfect, will be seen to be the logical and scientific outcome of monotheism, which negative material thinking can never abrogate.
"Divine Science," says Mrs. Eddy (Science and Health, p. 535), "deals its chief blow at the supposed material foundations of life and intelligence. It dooms idolatry. A belief in other gods, other creators, and other creations must go down before Christian Science."
