Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/331

Rh and affections, giving us strength according to our day. Sinners flourish “like a green bay-tree;” but, looking farther, the Psalmist could see their end, — namely, destruction.

Prayer is sometimes used, like the Roman Catholic confessional, to cancel sin. This error impedes true

religion. Sin is forgiven, only as it is destroyed by Christ, — Truth and Love. If prayer nourishes the belief that sin is cancelled, and that man is made better by merely praying, it is an evil. He grows worse, who continues in sin because he thinks himself forgiven.

An apostle says that the Son of God [Christ] came to “destroy the works of the Devil.” We should follow

our divine exemplar, and seek the destruction of all evil works, error and disease included. We cannot escape the penalty due for sin. The Scripture says, that if we deny Christ, “he will also deny us.”

The divine Love corrects and governs man. Men may pardon, but this divine Principle alone reforms the

sinner. God is not separate from the wisdom He bestows. The talents He gives we must improve. Calling on Him to forgive our work, badly done or left undone, implies the vain supposition that we have nothing to do but ask pardon, and that afterwards we shall be free to repeat the offence.

To cause suffering, as the result of sin, is the means of destroying sin. Every supposed pleasure in sin will furnish more than its equivalent in pain, until belief in material life and intelligence is destroyed. To reach Heaven, the harmony of Being, we must understand the divine Principle of Being.