TWO KINDS OF EVIDENCE
The word “evidence” is derived from the Latin evidentia, from video, “to see.”
The word “idolatry” is derived from the Greek word meaning “thing seen.”
Mrs. Eddy’s allegory, “The Trial” (SH 430-442), deals with attorneys battling over 2 kinds of evidence, both sides vehemently contradicting each other: mind versus Mind, the former presenting evidence of things seen and the latter presenting evidence of things not seen, also identified in Hebrews 11:1 as “the substance of things hoped for” or “faith.”
At the beginning of the trial, in the lower court of the senses, the accused (a critically sick patient) allows the prosecuting attorneys and a flood of witnesses to dominate the court — without a single “I object!”
During Hitler’s reign of terror, the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda successfully employed the technique of “the Big Lie” — the mesmeric repeating of a self-evident falsehood via party, press, and pulpit: radio broadcasts, newspapers, motion pictures, billboards, public notices, speeches, sermons, tracts and handouts, educational materials for children and young adults, with great urgency and emotional force — along with government censorship of any opposing viewpoints — all for the purposes of mass-“enlightenment”, which was nothing more than mind-control.
In the court of lower consciousness, the show-trial ends with a conviction — the death penalty! — without a peep of protest from the attorney-deprived convict, paralyzed, speechless with mind-monopolizing fear.
But on appeal, as he finally comes to his spiritual senses, the convict allows his attorney, Christian Science, to hold court and present evidence in the Supreme Court of Spirit, ultimately proving that the all the lower court’s “evidence” gathered by the physical senses amounted to nothing but a Big Lie.
At this point, the evil accusers of the lower court of mind cry out, “[declaring] that Christian Science was overthrowing the judicial proceedings of a regularly constituted court” (SH 437:25), but the higher court of Mind quickly dismisses this contempt-of-court claim.
At last, the lower court of sense and all its occupants are silenced, vanquished, dispersed like a wisp of smoke in a windstorm. And one Mind prevails.
More than ever before, Christian Scientists must refuse to allow thoughts from the lower court to kick Science out of their thought-life! “Thought passes from God to man” and only from God to man, not vice versa, “that man may have audience with Spirit” alone, not with fear, but with that which casts out fear, “the divine Principle, Love, which destroys all error.” (SH 284:30, 15:11)
Therefore, with the flaming sword of the Word of God protecting the Tree of Life in every direction, it’s time, as never before, to strike at the head of the phantom paper dragon of the Apocalypse that “deceiveth the whole world” (Rev. 12:9); time to turn whatever consciousness remains of its “reality” into dust and ashes!