Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/323

Rh that God makes sickness, sin, and death, or makes man capable of suffering on account of this malevolent triad, we should begin to sap the foundations of error, and ensure its destruction; but if we theoretically endow mortal mind with the creativeness and authority of Deity, how dare we attempt to destroy what He hath made, or even to deny that God made man evil, and made evil human?

History teaches that the popular and false notions about the Divine Being and character have originated in

the human mind. As there really is no mortal mind, this wrong notion about God must have originated in a false supposition, not in immortal Mind; and it is fading out. It is a false claim, which will eventually disappear, according to the teachings of the Apocalypse.

If the opposite of God is as real as He, there must be two supreme powers, and God is not all-powerful. Can

Deity be almighty, if another mighty and supreme self-creative being exists, and sways mankind? Hath the Father “Life in Himself,” as the Scripture saith? and, if so, can Life, or God, dwell in evil, and create it? Can matter drive Spirit hence, and so defeat omnipotence?

Is the woodman's axe, which destroys a tree's so called life, superior to omnipotence? Can a leaden bullet deprive a man of Life, — that is, of God, who is his Life? If God is at the mercy of matter, then matter is omnipotent. Such doctrines are “confusion worse confounded.” If two statements directly contradict each other, one must be false. Is Science thus contradictory?