l in divine
Science, by knowing Him in whom they have believed. This knowledge is not
the forbidden fruit of sin, sickness, and death, but it is the fruit which
grows on the "tree of life." This is the understanding of God, whereby man
is found in the image and likeness of good, not of evil; of health, not of
sickness; of Life, not of death.

God is All-in-all. Hence He is in Himself only, in His own nature and
character, and is perfect being, or consciousness. He is all the Life and
Mind there is or can be. Within Himself is every embodiment of Life and
Mind.

If He is All, He can have no consciousness of anything unlike Himself;
because, if He is omnipresent, there can be nothing outside of Himself.

Now this self-same God is our helper. He pities us. He has mercy upon us,
and guides every event of our careers. He is near to them who adore Him.
To understand Him, without a single taint of our mortal, finite sense of
sin, sickness, or death, is to approach Him and become like Him.

Truth is God, and in God's law. This law declares that Truth is All, and
there is no error. This law of Truth destroys every phase of error. To gain
a temporary consciousness of God's law is to feel, in a certain finite
human sense, that God comes to us and pities us; but the attainment of the
understanding of His presence, through the Science of God, destroys our
sense of imperfection, or of His absence, through a diviner sense that God
is all true consciousness; and this convinces us that, as we get still
nearer Him, we must forever lose our own consciousness of error.

But how could we lose all consciousness of error, if God be conscious of
it? God has not forbidden man to know Him; on the contrary, the Father bids
man have the same Mind "which was also in Christ Jesus,"--which was
certainly the divine Mind; but God does forbid man's acquaintance with
evil. Why? Because evil is no part of the divine knowledge.

John's Gospel declares (xvii. 3) that "life eternal" consists in the
knowledge of the only true God, and of Jesus Christ, whom He has sent.
Surely from such an understanding of Science, such knowing, the vision of
sin is wholly excluded.

Nevertheless, at the present crude hour, no wise men or women will rudely
or prematurely agitate a theme involving the All of infinity.

Rather will they rejoice in the small understanding they have already
gained of the wholeness of Deity, and work gradually and gently up toward
the perfe