Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1906).djvu/268

252 They are at war with Science, and as our Master said, “If a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.”

Human ignorance of Mind and of the recuperative energies of Truth occasions the only skepticism regarding the pathology and theology of Christian Science.

When false human beliefs learn even a little of their own falsity, they begin to disappear. A knowledge of

error and of its operations must precede that understanding of Truth which destroys error, until the entire mortal, material error finally disappears, and the eternal verity, man created by and of Spirit, is understood and recognized as the true likeness of his Maker.

The false evidence of material sense contrasts strikingly with the testimony of Spirit. Material sense lifts its voice with the arrogance of reality and says:

I am wholly dishonest, and no man knoweth it. I can cheat, lie, commit adultery, rob, murder, and I elude

detection by smooth-tongued villainy. Animal in propensity, deceitful in sentiment, fraudulent in purpose, I mean to make my short span of life one gala day. What a nice thing is sin! How sin succeeds, where the good purpose waits! The world is my kingdom. I am enthroned in the gorgeousness of matter. But a touch, an accident, the law of God, may at any moment annihilate my peace, for all my fancied joys are fatal. Like bursting lava, I expand but to my own despair, and shine with the resplendency of consuming fire.

Spirit, bearing opposite testimony, saith:

I am Spirit. Man, whose senses are spiritual, is my