If sin, sickness, and death are as real as Life, Truth,
and Love, then they must all be from the same source;
474:18 God must be their author. Now Jesus came
to destroy sin, sickness, and death yet the
Scriptures aver, "I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil."
474:21 Is it possible, then, to believe that the evils which Jesus
lived to destroy are real or the offspring of the divine
will?
Truth destroys falsity
474:24 Despite the hallowing influence of Truth in the de-
struction of error, must error still be immortal? Truth
spares all that is true. If evil is real, Truth
474:27 must make it so; but error, not Truth, is
the author of the unreal, and the unreal vanishes,
while all that is real is eternal. The apostle says that
474:30 the mission of Christ is to "destroy the works of the
devil." Truth destroys falsity and error, for light and
darkness cannot dwell together. Light extinguishes the
475:1 darkness, and the Scripture declares that there is "no
night there." To Truth there is no error, - all is Truth.
475:3 To infinite Spirit there is no matter, - all is Spirit, divine
Principle and its idea.
Fleshly factors unreal
/Question/. - What is man?
475:6 /Answer/. - Man is not matter; he is not made up of
brain, blood, bones, and other material elements. The
Scriptures inform us that man is made in
475:9 the image and likeness of God. Matter is
not that likeness. The likeness of Spirit cannot be so
unlike Spirit. Man is spiritual and perfect; and be-
475:12 cause he is spiritual and perfect, he must be so under-
stood in Christian Science. Man is idea, the image, of
Love; he is not physique. He is the compound idea of
475:15 God, including all right ideas; the generic term for
all that reflects God's image and likeness; the conscious
identity of being as found in Science, in which man is
475:18 the reflection of God, or Mind, and therefore is eternal;
that which has no separate mind from God; that which
has not a single quality underived from Deity; that which
475:21 possesses no life, intelligence, nor creative power of his
own, but reflects spiritually all that belongs to his Maker.
And God said: "Let us make man in our image, after
475:24 our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish
of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle,
and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that
475:27 creepeth upon the earth."
Man unfallen
Man is incapable of sin, sickness, and death. The
real man cannot depart from holiness, nor
475:30 can God, by whom man is evolved, engender
the capacity or freedom to sin. A mortal sinner is not
476:1 God's man. Mortals are the counterfeits of immortals.
They are the children of the wicked one, or the one evil,
476:3 which declares that man begins in dust or as a material
embryo. In divine Science, God and the real man are
inseparable as divine Principle and idea.
Mortals are not immortals
476:6 Error, urged to its final limits, is self-destroyed.
Error will cease to claim that soul is in body, that life
and intelligence are in matter, and that
476:9 this matter is man. God is the Principle of
man, and man is the idea of God. Hence man is not
mortal nor material. Mortals will disappear, and im-
476:12 mortals, or the children of God, will appear as the only
and eternal verities of man. Mortals are not fallen chil-
dren of God. They never had a perfect state of being,
476:15 which may subsequently be regained. They were, from
the beginning of mortal history, "conceived in sin and
brought forth in iniquity." Mortality is finally swallowed
476:18 up in immortality. Sin, sickness, and death must dis-
appear to give place to the facts which belong to immortal
man.