Editorial August 14, 1902 Issue

"Looking Backward"

Our ideal in Christian Science calls for the constant knowing of God, Good, and Him alone. Evil must not be conceded in any tense,—past, present, or future. To deny an assertion of error and then upon its disappearance to hold the disease or pain in thought, as a thing which has been, but is not, is to reopen the door to the intruder and thus invite its return, for Whatever has been, will be. The anticipation of error is no more disastrous than its recall, and when we know the spiritual reality of infinite Good and its infinite manifestation (Science and Health), then we will no longer think of evil as having had existence.

The idea that good and evil are necessary foils to each other, that it is impossible for good to be truly known save as the antipode of evil,—this is one of the earliest and subtlest of the serpent's deceptions. It has furnished a universal palliation for a universal offence, and is an important factor in the premises of all human philosophy. Over against all this thought stands God's swift and eternal condemnation of evil, as having neither place, now power, nor necessity, under any circumstances or at any time, in the counsels and kingdom of God.

Material sense may attach the largest value to contrast, but God is not honored, nor is our scientific apprehension enlarged or clarified, by the habit of emphasizing, in thought and in testimony, the seriousness of evil and of our past disabilities, that we may bring our present freedom into bolder relief. Rather let us guard against a belief in error's past or future, and so learn to glorify in thought and deed the perfection of God's ceaseless manifestation, the one spiritual fact of an eternal now.
W.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Editorial

Stopping with the Truth