Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/312

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
292
SCIENCE AND HEALTH.

of as made in God's image, it is not sinful and sickly mortal man who is referred to, but the ideal man, reflected as God's likeness.

It is sometimes said that Christian Science teaches the nothingness of sin, sickness, and death, and then Nothingness and vacuum. teaches how this nothingness is to be saved and healed. The nothingness of nothing is plain; but it should be understood that error is nothing, and that its nothingness must be demonstrated, in order to prove the somethingness — yea, the allness — of Truth. It is self-evident that we are healthy, happy, and good, only as we cease to be diseased, unhappy, and sinful. Disbelief in error destroys error, and causes Truth to be seen. There are no vacuums. How then can this demonstration be “fraught with falsities painful to behold,” as one opponent avers?

We treat error with Truth, because Truth is error's antidote. If a dream ceases, it is self-destroyed, and the Antidotes. terror is over. So when a sufferer is convinced that there is no reality in his belief of pain, because sensation in matter is but a false belief, how can he possibly suffer longer? Do you suffer the pain of tooth-pulling, when you believe that nitrous-oxide gas has made you unconscious? Yet, in your concept, the tooth, the operation, and the forceps are unchanged.

Material beliefs must be expelled to make room for spiritual understanding. We cannot serve both God and Mammon. Mammon at the same time; but is not this what frail mortals are trying to do? Paul says: “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.” Who is ready to admit this?

It is said, by one critic, that to verify this wonderful