Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1906).djvu/372

356 of spiritual and eternal truths, when the two are so antagonistic that the material thought must become

spiritualized before the spiritual fact is attained. So-called material existence affords no evidence of spiritual existence and immortality. Sin, sickness, and death do not prove man's entity or immortality. Discord can never establish the facts of harmony. Matter is not the vestibule of Spirit.

Jesus reasoned on this subject practically, and controlled sickness, sin, and death on the basis of his

spirituality. Understanding the nothingness of material things, he spoke of flesh and Spirit as the two opposites, — as error and Truth, not contributing in any way to each other's happiness and existence. Jesus knew, “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.”

There is neither a present nor an eternal copartnership between error and Truth, between flesh and Spirit.

God is as incapable of producing sin, sickness, and death as He is of experiencing these errors. How then is it possible for Him to create man subject to this triad of errors, — man who is made in the divine likeness?

Does God create a material man out of Himself, Spirit? Does evil proceed from good? Does divine Love commit a fraud on humanity by making man inclined to sin, and then punishing him for it? Would any one call it wise and good to create the primitive, and then punish its derivative?

Does subsequent follow its antecedent? It does. Was there original self-creative sin? Then there must have been more than one creator, more than one God.