Is Sin Forgiven?

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         The law of Life and Truth is the law of Christ, destroy-
3      ing all sense of sin and death. It does more than forgive
         the false sense named sin, for it pursues and punishes it,
         and will not let sin go until it is destroyed, — until nothing
6      is left to be forgiven, to suffer, or to be punished. For-
         given thus, sickness and sin have no relapse. God’s law
         reaches and destroys evil by virtue of the allness of God.

9      He need not know the evil He destroys, any more than
         the legislator need know the criminal who is punished by
         the law enacted. God’s law is in three words, “I am All;”
12    and this perfect law is ever present to rebuke any claim
         of another law. God pities our woes with the love of a
         Father for His child, — not by becoming human, and
15    knowing sin, or naught, but by removing our knowledge
         of what is not. He could not destroy our woes totally
         if He possessed any knowledge of them. His sympathy
18    is divine, not human. It is Truth’s knowledge of its own
         infinitude which forbids the genuine existence of even
         a claim to error. This knowledge is light wherein there
21    is no darkness, — not light holding darkness within itself.
         The consciousness of light is like the eternal law of God,
         revealing Him and nothing else.

24    Sympathy with sin, sorrow, and sickness would dethrone
         God as Truth, for Truth has no sympathy for error. In
         Science, the cure of the sick demonstrates this grand

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1      verity of Christian Science, that you cannot eradicate dis-
         ease if you admit that God sends it or sees it. Material
3      and mortal mind-healing (so-called) has for ages been
         a pretender, but has not healed mortals; and they are
         yet sick and sinful.

6      Disease and sin appear to-day in subtler forms than
         they did yesterday. They progress and will multiply into
         worse forms, until it is understood that disease and sin are
9      unreal, unknown to Truth, and never actual persons or
         real facts.

         Our phraseology varies. To me divine pardon is that
12    divine presence which is the sure destruction of sin; and
         I insist on the destruction of sin as the only full proof of
         its pardon. “For this purpose the Son of God was mani-
15    fested, that he might destroy the works of the devil”
         (1 John iii. 8).

         Jesus cast out evils, mediating between what is and is
18    not, until a perfect consciousness is attained. He healed
         disease as he healed sin; but he treated them both,
         not as in or of matter, but as mortal beliefs to be
21    exterminated. Physical and mental healing were one
         and the same with this master Metaphysician. If the
         evils called sin, sickness, and death had been forgiven
24    in the generally accepted sense, they would have returned,
         to be again forgiven; but Jesus said to disease: “Come
         out of him, and enter no more into him.” He said also:
27    “If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death;”
         and “Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound

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1      in heaven.” The misinterpretation of such passages has
         retarded the progress of Christianity and the spirituali-
3      zation of the race.

         A magistrate’s pardon may encourage a criminal to
         repeat the offense; because forgiveness, in the popular
6      sense of the word, can neither extinguish a crime nor the
         motives leading to it. The belief in sin — its pleasure,
         pain, or power — must suffer, until it is self-destroyed.
9      “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”