Is Christian Science Pantheistic?

Page 15

         Christian Science refutes pantheism, finds Spirit neither
21    in matter nor in the modes of mortal mind. It shows
         that matter and mortal mind have neither origin nor ex-
         istence in the eternal Mind. Thinking otherwise is what
24    estranges mortals from divine Life and Love. God is
         All-in-all. He is Spirit; and in nothing is He unlike Him-
         self. Nothing that “worketh or maketh a lie” is to be

Page 16

1      found in the divine consciousness. For God to know,
         is to be; that is, what He knows must truly and eternally
3      exist. If He knows matter, and matter can exist in Mind,
         then mortality and discord must be eternal. He is Mind;
         and whatever He knows is made manifest, and must be
6      Truth.

         If God knows evil even as a false claim, this knowledge
         would manifest evil in Him and proceeding from Him.
9      Christian Science shows that matter, evil, sin, sickness, and
         death are but negations of Spirit, Truth, and Life, which
         are positives that cannot be gainsaid. The subjective
12    states of evil, called mortal mind or matter, are negatives
         destitute of time and space; for there is none beside God
         or Spirit and the idea of Spirit.

15    This infinite logic is the infinite light, — uncompre-
         hended, yet forever giving forth more light, because it
         has no darkness to emit. Mortals do not understand the
18    All; hence their inference of some other existence beside
         God and His true likeness, — of something unlike Him.
         He who is All, understands all. He can have no knowl-
21    edge or inference but His own consciousness, and can take
         in no more than all.

         The mists of matter — sin, sickness, and death — dis-
24    appear in proportion as mortals approach Spirit, which
         is the reality of being. It is not enough to say that matter
         is the substratum of evil, and that its highest attenuation is
27    mortal mind; for there is, strictly speaking, no mortal
         mind. Mind is immortal. Death is the consequent of an

Page 17

1      antecedent false assumption of the realness of something
         unreal, material, and mortal. If God knows the antece-
3      dent, He must produce its consequences. From this logic
         there is no escape. Matter, or evil, is the absence of Spirit
         or good. Their nothingness is thus proven; for God is
6      good, ever-present, and All.

         “In Him we live, and move, and have our being;” con-
         sequently it is impossible for the true man — who is a
9      spiritual and individual being, created in the eternal
         Science of being — to be conscious of aught but good.
         God’s image and likeness can never be less than a good
12    man; and for man to be more than God’s likeness is
         impossible. Man is the climax of creation; and God is
         not without an ever-present witness, testifying of Himself.
15    Matter, or any mode of mortal mind, is neither part nor
         parcel of divine consciousness and God’s verity.

         In Science there is no fallen state of being; for therein
18    is no inverted image of God, no escape from the focal
         radiation of the infinite. Hence the unreality of error,
         and the truth of the Scripture, that there is “none beside
21    Him.” If mortals could grasp these two words all and
         nothing, this mystery of a God who has no knowledge of
         sin would disappear, and the eternal, infinite harmony
24    would be fathomed. If God could know a false claim,
         false knowledge would be a part of His consciousness.
         Then evil would be as real as good, sickness as real as
27    health, death as real as Life; and sickness, sin, and death
         would be as eternal as God.