Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1906).djvu/555

Rh of sin and sin's progeny. This false sense of existence is fratricidal. In the words of Jesus, it (evil, devil) is “a murderer from the beginning.” Error begins by reckoning life as separate from Spirit, thus sapping the foundations of immortality, as if life and immortality were something which matter can both give and take away.

What can be the standard of good, of Spirit, of Life, or of Truth, if they produce their opposites, such as evil,

matter, error, and death? God could never impart an element of evil, and man possesses nothing which he has not derived from God. How then has man a basis for wrong-doing? Whence does he obtain the propensity or power to do evil? Has Spirit resigned to matter the government of the universe?

The Scriptures declare that God condemned this lie as to man's origin and character by condemning its symbol,

the serpent, to grovel beneath all the beasts of the field. It is false to say that Truth and error commingle in creation. In parable and argument, this falsity is exposed by our Master as self-evidently wrong. Disputing these points with the Pharisees and arguing for the Science of creation, Jesus said: “Do men gather grapes of thorns?” Paul asked: “What communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial?”

The divine origin of Jesus gave him more than human power to expound the facts of creation, and demonstrate

the one Mind which makes and governs man and the universe. The Science of creation, so conspicuous in the birth of Jesus, inspired his wisest and least-understood sayings, and was the basis of his