Article October 17, 1903 Issue

The Impersonal Nature of Evil

BLANCHE H. HOGUE

For generations the trend of human education has divided the world into two great classes,—good people and bad people. Much of the religious teaching of the past has classified humankind as saved or lost, without reference to individual merit, but rather because of a definite foreordained plan. The liberality of modern religious thought gives to the individual the opportunity to effect his salvation through the choice of righteousness, but still draws its line between good and bad people. Advancing thought has rebelled, in great measure, against this extreme classification, for the very evident reason that the good people are often found guilty of startling inconsistencies, while the so-called evil people have been moved by noble impulses to the performance of great and good deeds. Theoretically a dividing line could be drawn, but in practice it could not be made to adjust itself to the men and women whose lives it attempted to classify.

However, progressive thought, obeying an instinctive love of good, has been rapidly outgrowing this narrower interpretation of the human problem, and has encouraged the cultivation of good and the destruction of evil in every life, trusting the outcome to the wisdom of a loving Father. Education has pressed forward upon broadening lines, until the advent of the Science of Christianity in Mrs. Eddy's book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," has given to the world an interpretation of human conditions which removes the question of good and evil from the domain of person to the realm of mind.

It is readily discerned that the Master's illustrations of the wheat and the tares, the sheep and the goats, are of little ethical value to-day unless the disciple applies them to his own good and evil thinking, rather than to the fate of good and bad people. The perplexing query as to who shall be saved and who shall be lost, resolves itself into the question of what shall be saved and what shall be lost, and as the world recognizes the eternity and indestructibility of good, and the perishable and passing nature of evil, every man's right to achieve permanent right thinking, and consequently permanent salvation, will be established. It is evident that thinking governs the situation, for right thinking expresses itself in right living, and right living has for its end salvation, inasmuch as it cannot be condemned.

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