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180 Word is not absolute truth but accommodated truth. It is in the letter accommodated to all sorts and conditions of men, and "is not understood without doctrine;" in the spiritual sense truth is accommodated to the angels of heaven, and to the apprehension of instructed and spiritually minded men. But even to the angels truth is clothed in appearances, and is absolute only with God.

If it be said that "absolute" is not used in this technical sense, but only as equivalent to genuine truth and as distinguished from falsity and sensuous fallacy, then we have to inquire whether or not Christian Science has any knowledge of genuine truths. The fact that "people have been cured of longstanding diseases which have resisted all forms of medication" counts for nothing in this inquiry; for any mental persuasion may effect this, and, as we have said, a false persuasion may be more immediately effective than the truth, because stronger in appeal to hope and ambition. What are the truths upon which Christian Science relies?

"The omnipresence of God, his perpetual immanence in the soul, the power of truth and of faith, the force of ideas, the curative efficacy of thought, the ubiquity of mind—