Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.djvu/489

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GENESIS.
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created such a belief. Jesus defines this opposite of God and His creation better than we can, when he says, “He is a liar, and the father of it.” Jesus also said, “I have chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil.” This he said of Judas. Jesus never intimated that God made a devil, but he did say, “Ye are of your father, the Devil.” All these sayings were to show mortals that error is the author of itself, and is simply a falsity and illusion.

An inquirer said to me: “I like your explanations about Truth, but I cannot understand what you say about error. How can there be a belief without a believer?” I answer: The believer is the belief, and the belief is the falsity. Error would have itself received as Mind, as if it were as real and God-created as Truth; but Science attributes to error neither entity nor power, because error is neither Mind nor its outcome.

Searching for the origin of man is like inquiring into the origin of God, the self-existent and eternal. The belief is self-evidently incorrect, that would unite Spirit and matter, Good and evil, Immortality and mortality, and call this unity man; as if man were created both by God and mortals, by Good and evil.

Creation rests on a spiritual basis. We lose our stan- dard of perfection, and set aside the proper conception of Deity, when we admit that the Perfect is the author of aught that can become imperfect, that God gives the power to sin, or that Truth confers the ability to err.

Our great example, Jesus, could restore the individualized manifestation of existence, that seemed to flee with death. Knowing that God is the Life of man, he was able to present himself unchanged after the crucifixion. Truth fosters the idea of Truth, and not one