Man shines by borrowed light. He reflects God as his Mind, and this
reflection is substance,--the substance of good. Matter is substance in
error, Spirit is substance in Truth.
Evil, or error, is not Mind; but infinite Mind is sufficient to supply all
manifestations of intelligence. The notion of more than one Mind, or Life,
is as unsatisfying as it is unscientific. All must be of God, and not our
own, separated from Him.
Human systems of philosophy and religion are departures from Christian
Science. Mistaking divine Principle for corporeal personality, ingrafting
upon one First Cause such opposite effects as good and evil, health and
sickness, life and death; making mortality the status and rule of
divinity,--such methods can never reach the perfection and demonstration of
metaphysical, or Christian Science.
Stating the divine Principle, omnipotence (_omnis potens_), and then
departing from this statement and taking the rule of finite matter, with
which to work out the problem of infinity or Spirit,--all this is like
trying to compensate for the absence of omnipotence by a physical, false,
and finite substitute.
With our Master, life was not merely a sense of existence, but an
accompanying sense of power that subdued matter and brought to light
immortality, insomuch that the people "were astonished at his doctrine: for
he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.
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