Part 43 (1/2)

Error is false, mortal belief; it is illusion, without spir- itual ident.i.ty or foundation, and it has no real existence.

287:24 The supposition that life, substance, and in- telligence are _in_ matter, or _of_ it, is an error.

Matter is neither a thing nor a person, but merely the 287:27 objective supposition of Spirit's opposite. The five mate- rial senses testify to truth and error as united in a mind both good and evil. Their false evidence will finally 287:30 yield to Truth, - to the recognition of Spirit and of the spiritual creation.

Truth cannot be contaminated by error. The state- 288:1 ment that _Truth is real_ necessarily includes the correlated statement, that _error, Truth's unlikeness, is unreal_.

The great conflict

288:3 The suppositional warfare between truth and error is only the mental conflict between the evidence of the spir- itual senses and the testimony of the material 288:6 senses, and this warfare between the Spirit and flesh will settle all questions through faith in and the un- derstanding of divine Love.

288:9 Superst.i.tion and understanding can never combine.

When the final physical and moral effects of Christian Science are fully apprehended, the conflict between truth 288:12 and error, understanding and belief, Science and material sense, foreshadowed by the prophets and inaugurated by Jesus, will cease, and spiritual harmony reign. The 288:15 lightnings and thunderbolts of error may burst and flash till the cloud is cleared and the tumult dies away in the distance. Then the raindrops of divinity refresh the 288:18 earth. As St. Paul says: ”There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of G.o.d” (of Spirit).

The chief stones in the temple

The chief stones in the temple of Christian Science are 288:21 to be found in the following postulates: that Life is G.o.d, good, and not evil; that Soul is sinless, not to be found in the body; that Spirit is not, and 288:24 cannot be, materialized; that Life is not subject to death; that the spiritual real man has no birth, no ma- terial life, and no death.

The Christ-element

288:27 Science reveals the glorious possibilities of immortal man, forever unlimited by the mortal senses.

The Christ-element in the Messiah made him 288:30 the Way-shower, Truth and Life.

The eternal Truth destroys what mortals seem to have learned from error, and man's real existence as a child 289:1 of G.o.d comes to light. Truth demonstrated is eternal life. Mortal man can never rise from the temporal _debris_ 289:3 of error, belief in sin, sickness, and death, until he learns that G.o.d is the only Life. The belief that life and sensa- tion are in the body should be overcome by the under- 289:6 standing of what const.i.tutes man as the image of G.o.d.

Then Spirit will have overcome the flesh.

Wickedness is not man

A wicked mortal is not the idea of G.o.d. He is little 289:9 else than the expression of error. To suppose that sin, l.u.s.t, hatred, envy, hypocrisy, revenge, have life abiding in them, is a terrible mistake. Life 289:12 and life's idea, Truth and Truth's idea, never make men sick, sinful, or mortal.

Death but an illusion

The fact that the Christ, or Truth, overcame and still 289:15 overcomes death proves the ”king of terrors” to be but a mortal belief, or error, which Truth destroys with the spiritual evidences of Life; and this 289:18 shows that what appears to the senses to be death is but a mortal illusion, for to the real man and the real universe there is no death-process.

289:21 The belief that matter has life results, by the universal law of mortal mind, in a belief in death. So man, tree, and flower are supposed to die; but the fact remains, 289:24 that G.o.d's universe is spiritual and immortal.

Spiritual offspring

The spiritual fact and the material belief of things are contradictions; but the spiritual is true, and therefore the 289:27 material must be untrue. Life is not in matter.

Therefore it cannot be said to pa.s.s out of mat- ter. Matter and death are mortal illusions. Spirit and 289:30 all things spiritual are the real and eternal.

Man is not the offspring of flesh, but of Spirit, - of Life, not of matter. Because Life is G.o.d, Life must be 290:1 eternal, self-existent. Life is the everlasting I AM, the Be- ing who was and is and shall be, whom nothing can erase.

Death no advantage

290:3 If the Principle, rule, and demonstration of man's being are not in the least understood before what is termed death overtakes mortals, they will rise no higher spir- 290:6 itually in the scale of existence on account of that single experience, but will remain as material as be- fore the transition, still seeking happiness through a ma- 290:9 terial, instead of through a spiritual sense of life, and from selfish and inferior motives. That Life or Mind is finite and physical or is manifested through brain and nerves, 290:12 is false. Hence Truth comes to destroy this error and its effects, - sickness, sin, and death. To the spiritual cla.s.s, relates the Scripture: ”On such the second death 290:15 hath no power.”

Future purification

If the change called _death_ destroyed the belief in sin, sickness, and death, happiness would be won at the mo- 290:18 ment of dissolution, and be forever permanent; but this is not so. Perfection is gained only by perfection. They who are unrighteous shall be un- 290:21 righteous still, until in divine Science Christ, Truth, re- moves all ignorance and sin.

Sin is punished