The hour has struck when proof and demon-3stration, instead of opinion and dogma, are summoned to the support of Christianity, “making wise the simple.”

    Christian Science awakens the sinner, reclaims the infidel, and raises from the couch of pain the helpless Argument of good worksinvalid. ... It causes the deaf to hear, the lame to walk, and the blind to see.

    Jesus strips all disguise from error, when his teachings 15are fully understood. By parable and argument he ex-Proof from miraclesplains the impossibility of good producing evil; and he also scientifically demonstrates this great 18fact, proving by what are wrongly called miracles, that sin, sickness, and death are beliefs — illusive errors — which he could and did destroy.

When man is spoken of as made in God’s 3God’s idea the ideal manimage, it is not sinful and sickly mortal man who is referred to, but the ideal man, reflecting God’s likeness.

The nothingness of nothing is plain; but we need to understand that error is nothing, and that its nothingness is not saved, but must be demonstrated in 12order to prove the somethingness — yea, the allness — of Truth. ... Disbelief in error destroys error, and leads to the discernment of Truth.

    We treat error through the understanding of Truth, because Truth is error’s antidote. If a dream ceases, it 21Truth antidotes erroris self-destroyed, and the terror is over.

    If Christian Science takes away the popular gods, — 24sin, sickness, and death, — it is Christ, Truth, who de-stroys these evils, and so proves their nothingness.

    The dream that matter and error are something 27must yield to reason and revelation. Then mortals will behold the nothingness of sickness and sin, and sin and sickness will disappear from consciousness. 30The harmonious will appear real, and the inharmo-nious unreal.

To Jesus, not 9materiality, but spirituality, was the reality of man’s ex-istence, while to the rabbis the spiritual was the intangi-ble and uncertain, if not the unreal.

    Children, like adults, ought to fear a reality which 18can harm them and which they do not understand, for at any moment they may become its helpless victims; but instead of increasing children’s fears by declaring 21ghosts to be real, merciless, and powerful, thus water-ing the very roots of childish timidity, children should be assured that their fears are groundless, that ghosts 24are not realities, but traditional beliefs, erroneous and man-made.

    In short, children should be told not to believe in ghosts, 27because there are no such things. The objects of alarm will then vanish into noth-30ingness, no longer seeming worthy of fear or honor. To accomplish a good result, it is certainly not irrational to tell the truth about ghosts.

353:1    The Christianly scientific real is the sensuous unreal. Sin, disease, whatever seems real to material sense, is un -3The real and the unrealreal in divine Science. The physical senses and Science have ever been antagonistic, and they will so continue, till the testimony of the physical 6senses yields entirely to Christian Science.

All must admit that Christ is “the way, the truth, and the life,” and that omnipotent Truth certainly 12does destroy error.

    The age has not wholly outlived the sense of ghostly beliefs. It still holds them more or less.All the real is eternal. Perfection underlies reality. Without perfection, nothing is wholly 18real. All things will continue to disappear, until per-fection appears and reality is reached. We must give up the spectral at all points. We must not continue to admit 21the somethingness of superstition, but we must yield up all belief in it and be wise. When we learn that error is not real, we shall be ready for progress, “forgetting 24those things which are behind.”

Mind is limitless. It never was material. The true idea of being is spiritual and immortal, and from this it follows 30that whatever is laid off is the ghost, some unreal belief. Mortal beliefs can neither demonstrate Christianity nor apprehend the reality of Life.

So-called material existence affords no evidence of spiritual existence and immortality. Sin, 6sickness, and death do not prove man’s entity or immor-tality. Discord can never establish the facts of harmony. Matter is not the vestibule of Spirit.

9    Jesus reasoned on this subject practically, and con-trolled sickness, sin, and death on the basis of his spir-Irreconcilable differencesituality. Understanding the nothingness of 12material things, he spoke of flesh and Spirit as the two opposites, — as error and Truth, not contrib-uting in any way to each other’s happiness and existence. 15Jesus knew, “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.”

God is as incapable of producing sin, sick-ness, and death as He is of experiencing these 21errors.

God is “of purer eyes than to behold evil.” We sustain Truth, not by accept-6ing, but by rejecting a lie.

    Jesus said of personified evil, that it was “a liar, and the father of it.” Truth creates neither a lie, a capacity 9to lie, nor a liar.

As there is in reality but one God, one Mind, wrong notions about God 21must have originated in a false supposition, not in im-mortal Truth, and they are fading out. They are false claims, which will eventually disappear, according to the 24vision of St. John in the Apocalypse.

    Christian Science, understood, coincides with the Scriptures, and sustains logically and demonstratively Scientific and Biblical factsevery point it presents. Otherwise it would 12not be Science, and could not present its proofs. ... It presents the calm and clear verdict of Truth against error, uttered and illustrated by the prophets, by Jesus, by his apostles, as is recorded throughout the 18Scriptures.