Why do Christian Scientists say God and His idea are the only realities,
and then insist on the need of healing sickness and sin? Because Christian
Science heals sin as it heals sickness, by establishing the recognition
that God _is All_, and there is none beside Him,--that all is good, and
there is in reality no evil, neither sickness nor sin. We attack the
sinner's belief in the pleasure of sin, _alias_ the reality of sin, which
makes him a sinner, in order to destroy this belief and save him from sin;
and we attack the belief of the sick in the reality of sickness, in order
to heal them. When we deny the authority of sin, we begin to sap it; for
this denunciation must precede its destruction.
God is good, hence goodness is something, for it represents God, the Life
of man. Its opposite, nothing, named _evil_, is nothing but a conspiracy
against man's Life and goodness. Do you not feel bound to expose this
conspiracy, and so to save man from it? Whosoever covers iniquity becomes
accessory to it. Sin, as a claim, is more dangerous than sickness, more
subtle, more difficult to heal.
St. Augustine once said, "The devil is but the ape of God." Sin is worse
than sickness; but recollect that it encourages sin to say, "There is no
sin," and leave the subject there.
Sin ultimates in sinner, and in this sense they are one. You cannot
separate sin from the sinner, nor the sinner from his sin. The sin is the
sinner, and _vice versa_, for such is the unity of evil; and together both
sinner and sin will be destroyed by the supremacy of good. This, however,
does not annihilate man, for to efface sin, _alias_ the sinner, brings to
light, makes apparent, the real man, even God's "image and likeness." Need
it be said that any opposite theory is heterodox to divine Science, which
teaches that good is equally _one_ and _all_, even as the opposite claim of
evil is one.
In Christian Science the fact is made obvious that the sinner and the sin
are alike simply nothingness; and this view is supported by the Scripture,
where the Psalmist saith: "He shall go to the generation of his fathers;
they shall never see light. Man that is in honor, and understandeth not, is
like the beasts that perish." God's ways and works and thoughts have never
changed, either in Principle or practice.
Since there is in belief an illusion termed sin, which must be met and
mastered, we classify sin, sickness, and death as illusions. They are
supposititious claims of error; and error being a false claim, they are no
claims at all. It is scientific to abide in conscious harmony, in
health-giving, deathless Truth and Love. To do this, mortals must first
open their eyes to all the illusive forms, methods, and subtlety of error,
in order that the illusion, error, may be destroyed; if this is not done,
mortals will become the victims of error.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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