Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/254

234 XXX. The destruction of sin is the divine method of pardon. Divine Life destroys death, Truth destroys

error, and Love destroys hate. Being destroyed, sin needs no other form of forgiveness. Does not God's pardon, destroying any one sin, prophesy and involve the final destruction of all sin?

XXXI. Since God is All, there is no room for His opposite. He alone created the real, and it is good;

therefore evil, being the opposite of goodness, is unreal, and cannot be the product of God. The evil-doer can receive no encouragement from the fact that Science teaches that evil is the unreality of existence; for the sinner is making a reality of sin, — making that real which is unreal, — and thus heaping up “wrath against the day of wrath.” He is joining in a conspiracy against himself, — against his awakening to the awful unreality by which he has been deceived. Only those who repent of sin, and forsake all evil, can fully understand the unreality of evil.

XXXII. As the mythology of pagan Rome has yielded to a more spiritual idea of Deity, so will our material

theories yield to spiritual ideas, until the finite gives place to the infinite, sickness to health, sin to holiness, and God's kingdom comes “on earth as in Heaven.” The basis of all health, sinlessness, and immortality is the great fact that God is the only Mind; and this Mind must be not merely believed, but understood. To get rid of sin, through Science, is to divest sin of any supposed mind or reality, and never to admit that sin can have intelligence or power, pain or pleasure. You conquer error by denying its verity. Our various theories will never lose their imaginary power