Question. — Are doctrines and creeds a benefit to man?
Answer. — I subscribed to an Orthodox creed in early youth, and strictly adhered to it through many years; but when all earthly means had failed to restore my health, I caught the first gleam of what interprets God as higher than man-made creeds. This vision took me away from human beliefs, and gave the spiritual import of all things from the Divine Mind expressed through Science. This gave me a new sense of Life, of God, and healed me.
Ever since then my highest creed has been Divine Science, which, reduced to human apprehension, I have named Christian Science. This Sacred Science teaches man that God is his only Life, and that this Life is Truth and Love; that God is to be understood and demonstrated, instead of believed and feared; that divine understanding casts out human error and heals the sick.
The way that leads to Science is strait and narrow. God has set his signet to Science, making it coördinate with all that is real, with only that which is harmonious and eternal. Sickness, sin, and death, being inharmonious, originate not in God, nor belong to His government. His law, rightly understood, destroys them. Jesus furnished proofs of these statements.
Question. — What is error?
Answer. — Error is a supposition of pleasure and pain, of Intelligence, Substance, and Life as existent in matter. Again — error is neither Mind, nor one of its faculties. Mind is Truth. Error is its opposite, a belief without understanding. Error is unreal because untrue, — that which seemeth to be, and is not.
Question. — Is there no sin?
