seed, and
believes that his crops come from the seedling and the [10]
loam; even while the Scripture declares He made "every
plant of the field before it was in the earth." The Scien-
tist asks, Whence came the first seed, and what made
the soil? Was it molecules, or material atoms? Whence
came the infinitesimals,--from infinite Mind, or from [15]
matter? If from matter, how did matter originate? Was
it self-existent? Matter is not intelligent, and thus able
to evolve or create itself: it is the very opposite of Spirit,
intelligent, self-creative, and infinite Mind. The belief
of mind in matter is pantheism. Natural history shows [20]
that neither a genus nor a species produces its opposite.
God is All, in all. What can be more than All? Noth-
ing: and this is just what I call matter, _nothing_. Spirit,
God, has no antecedent; and God's consequent is the
spiritual cosmos. The phrase, "express image," in the [25]
common version of Hebrews i. 3, is, in the Greek Tes-
tament, _character_.

The Scriptures name God as good, and the Saxon
term for God is also good. From this premise comes
the logical conclusion that God is naturally and divinely [30]
infinite good. How, then, can this conclusion change,
or be changed, to mean that good is evil, or the creator

[Page 27.]

of evil? What can there be besides infinity? Nothing! [1]
Therefore the Science of good calls evil _nothing_. In
divine Science the terms God and good, as Spirit, are
synonymous. That God, good, creates evil, or aught
that can result in evil,--or that Spirit creates its oppo- [5]
site, named matter,--are conclusions that destroy their
premise and prove themselves invalid. Here is where
Christian Science sticks to its text, and other systems
of religion abandon their own logic. Here also is found
the pith of the basal statement, the cardinal point in [10]
Christian Science, that matter and evil (including all
inharmony, sin, disease, death) are _unreal_. Mortals
accept natural science, wherein no species ever pro-
duces its opposite. Then why not accept divine Sci-
ence on this ground? since the Scriptures maintain [15]
this fact by parable and proof, asking, "Do men
gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" "Doth a
fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and
bitter?"

According to reason and revelation, evil and matter [20]
are negation: for evil signifies the absence of good, God,
though God is ever present; and matter claims so