SIN, SINNER, AND ECCLESIASTICISM


Why do Christian Scientists say God and His idea are the only realities,
and then insist on the need of healing sickness and sin? Because Christian
Science heals sin as it heals sickness, by establishing the recognition
that God _is All_, and there is none beside Him,--that all is good, and
there is in reality no evil, neither sickness nor sin. We attack the
sinner's belief in the pleasure of sin, _alias_ the reality of sin, which
makes him a sinner, in order to destroy this belief and save him from sin;
and we attack the belief of the sick in the reality of sickness, in order
to heal them. When we deny the authority of sin, we begin to sap it; for
this denunciation must precede its destruction.

God is good, hence goodness is something, for it represents God, the Life
of man. Its opposite, nothing, named _evil_, is nothing but a conspiracy
against man's Life and goodness. Do you not feel bound to expose this
conspiracy, and so to save man from it? Whosoever covers iniquity becomes
accessory to it. Sin, as a claim, is more dangerous than sickness, more
subtle, more difficult to heal.

St. Augustine once said, "The devil is but the ape of God." Sin is worse
than sickness; but recollect that it encourages sin to say, "There is no
sin," and leave the subject there.

Sin ultimates in sinner, and in this sense they are one. You cannot
separate sin from the sinner, nor the sinner from his sin. The sin is the