Sin existed as a false claim before the human concept of sin was formed; hence one’s concept of error is not the whole of error.  The human thought does not constitute sin, but vice versa, sin constitutes the human or physical concept.

Sin is both concrete and abstract.  Sin was, and is, the lying supposition that life, substance, and intelligence are both material and spiritual, and yet are separate from God.  The first iniquitous manifestation of sin was a finity.  The finite was self-arrayed against the infinite, the mortal against immortality, and a sinner was the antipode of God.

Silencing self, alias rising above corporeal personality, is what reforms the sinner and destroys sin.  In the ratio that the testimony of material personal sense ceases, sin diminishes, until the false claim called sin is finally lost for lack of witness.

The sinner created neither himself nor sin, but sin created the sinner; that is, error made its man mortal, and this mortal was the image and likeness of evil, not of good.  Therefore the lie was, and is, collective as well as individual.  It was in no way contingent on Adam’s thought, but supposititiously self-created.  In the words of our Master, it, the “devil” (alias evil), “was a liar, and the father of it.”

This mortal material concept was never a creator, although as a serpent it claimed to originate in the name of “the Lord,” or good,—­original evil; second, in the name of human concept, it claimed to beget the offspring of evil, alias an evil offspring.  However, the human concept never was, neither indeed can be, the father of man.  Even the spiritual idea, or ideal man, is not a parent, though he reflects the infinity of good.  The great difference between these opposites is, that the human material concept is unreal, and the divine concept or idea is spiritually real.  One is false, while the other is true.  One is temporal, but the other is eternal.

Our Master instructed his students to “call no man your father upon the earth:  for one is your Father, which is in heaven.” (Matt. xxiii. 9.)

Science and Health, the textbook of Christian Science, treats of the human concept, and the transference of thought, as follows:—­

    “How can matter originate or transmit mind?  We answer that it
    cannot.  Darkness and doubt encompass thought, so long as it bases
    creation on materiality” (p. 551).

“In reality there is no mortal mind, and consequently no transference of mortal thought and will-power.  Life and being are of God.  In Christian Science, man can do no harm, for scientific thoughts are true thoughts, passing from God to man” (pp. 103, 104).

“Man is the offspring of Spirit.  The beautiful, good, and pure constitute his ancestry.  His origin is not, like that of mortals, in brute instinct, nor does he pass through material conditions