154 The Fundamentals know that the greatest impediment to man’s progress is not sickness, but sin. And yet in the text-book of Eddyism we are told that “The only reality of sin is the awful fact that it seems real to human belief, until God strips off its disguise.” Sin is an illusion, we are informed. And so this scheme seeks to save the sinner by convincing him that he is not a sinner —unless he believes himself to be! Which is another ear mark of pantheism. Pantheism necessarily excludes the possibility of sin. And this modern high-priestess of 60,000 American people does the same. If our reason be God’s rea son, our intelligence God’s intelligence, our activity God’s ac tivity, of course we cannot sin. If God is Mind, and man is “the full expression of Mind” (as “Science and Health” says), there is nothing in us which is not God. God is God in the Apostle John or in the Emperor Nero, in Phillips Brooks or John Wilkes Booth. “God is all in all. God is good. There fore all is good.” Therefore nothing is evil! Now, this is not merely untrue, but it is pernicious in the highest degree. This is exactly the kind of doctrine which ill- balanced people—morally ill-balanced, I mean—will be only too pleased to welcome. For one person who seriously per suades himself that his headache is not a real headache, you may find twenty only too happy to persuade themselves that their sins are not real sins. I have but one name for teaching which denies sin and declares vice to be an illusion: it is neither more nor less than moral poison. Let us face facts. We all should like to know that sin is only a bad dream, as was taught by Brahmanism, and which we shall find to have been a dream when we awake. Men would give almost anything to be delivered from the sense of sin as a dread reality, for it makes them uncomfortable; it interferes with their peace of mind. To be delivered from the acute discomfort of shame, remorse, self-contempt, were surely more desirable
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