The doubtful or spurious evidence of the senses is not to be
admitted,--especially when they testify concerning Spirit, whereof they are
confessedly incompetent to speak.
_Evil._ But mortal mind and sin really exist!
_Good._ How can they exist, unless God has created them? And how can He
create anything so wholly unlike Himself and foreign to His nature? An evil
material mind, so-called, can conceive of God only as like itself, and
knowing both evil and good; but a purely good and spiritual consciousness
has no sense whereby to cognize evil. Mortal mind is the opposite of
immortal Mind, and sin the opposite of goodness. I am the infinite All.
From me proceedeth all Mind, all consciousness, all individuality, all
being. My Mind is divine good, and cannot drift into evil. To believe in
minds many is to depart from the supreme sense of harmony. Your assumptions
insist that there is more than the one Mind, more than the one God; but
verily I say unto you, God is All-in-all; and you can never be outside of
His oneness.
_Evil._ I am a finite consciousness, a material individuality,--a mind in
matter, which is both evil and good.
_Good._ All consciousness is Mind; and Mind is God,--an infinite, and not a
finite consciousness. This consciousness is reflected in individual
consciousness, or man, whose source is infinite Mind. There is no really
finite mind, no finite consciousness. There is no material substance, for
Spirit is all that endureth, and hence is the only substance. There is, can
be, no evil mind, because Mind is God. God and His ideas--that is, God and
the universe--constitute all that exists. Man, as God's offspring, must be
spiritual, perfect, eternal.
_Evil._ I am something separate from good or God. I am substance. My mind
is more than matter. In my mortal mind, matter becomes conscious, and is
able to see, taste, hear, feel, smell. Whatever matter thus affirms is
mainly correct. If you, O good, deny this, then I deny your truthfulness.
If you say that matter is unconscious, you stultify my intellect, insult my
conscience, and dispute self-evident facts; for nothing can be clearer than
the testimony of the five senses.
_Good._ Spirit is the only substance. Spirit is God, and God is good; hence
good is the only substance, the only Mind. Mind is not, cannot be, in
matter. It sees, hears, feels, tastes, smells as Mind, and not as matter.
Matter cannot talk; and hence, whatever it appears to say of itself is a
lie. This lie, that Mind can be in matter,--claiming to be something beside
God, denying Truth and its demonstration in Christian Science,--this lie I
declare an illusion. This denial enlarges the human intellect by removing
its evidence from sense to Soul, and from finiteness into infinity. It
honors conscious human individuality by showing God as its source.
_Evil._ I am a creator,--but upon a material, not a spiritual basis. I give
life, and I can destroy life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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