In the earliest beginnings of time, evil was evil; and in the remotest, hoary cycles, so long as a belief of material existence remains, evil will be evil. Events which are separated, in sense, many years from our individual problems, seem lost in the shadows, and so vague as to have little worth as present-day helps. This belief is in itself mesmerism, for by the operation of such a supposition, the Holy Scriptures have become to some, only an example of pure English, pure style, and pure ethics, with but little that is practical. The value of understanding fully the simple axiom that evil is always evil, and its corollary, that good is always good, cannot be over-estimated. By means of the illumination which it brings, we are able to heal by reading the Bible, because every statement of Truth is a present statement of a present Truth, every expose and denunciation of error is, for us, a demolition of the particular phase of material sense which at that moment is causing us distress. It is probable that herein lies the reason for the Christian Scientist's zealous study of the Bible. Our perspective is a near one. Bursting through the mists that popularly enshroud the Old Testament figures, and even Jesus and his apostles, we span the centuries with an instant realization, hear the thunders of Sinai, and understand the Christ, when he says, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."

No matter what the period or epoch, or how primitive the state of society we may study, the only real differences are, after all, superficial; such as speech, customs, and manners of living, costume, and like trivial details of outward life that do not make up the man, even in a human sense. Stripped of all century marks and every characteristic of clime and race, evil is always evil, and—nothing.

When Paul stood in the cool, tiled Roman judgment hall, before a special tribunal, he seemed alone. The keen eyes and impassive face of the most noble Festus gave no promise of help. As, from his elevated seat, he swept the hall with a Roman's look of conscious dignity, there may have been in his glance some of the Roman's scorn for a conquered people, a fine disdain of an unmartial, politic, and cringing race, who brought their private religious disputes before a civil or criminal court. Paul would have looked in vain for a sign of sympathy or encouragement on the immobile faces of the court attendants or Roman guard. He knew better than to expect that a plea for justice, for toleration, or even for reason, would be heard by his accusers. The hall was filled with eager zealots, those Jews "which came down from Jerusalem" to arraign him before Festus. Perhaps among those who "stood round about" Paul, before the judgment-seat, were some who had taken part only a few years before in that mournful tragedy, when his dear Lord and Master was crucified. The same hate and malevolence which offered taunts to the patient Jesus, were gathered about his other man of God, to goad him to his death. Paul may have felt that his supreme test had come, he may even have sought among the throng a single friendly face, grateful if he could feel the encouragement of a brother's presence. And then to him there must have come that ineffable bliss which bathed Jesus in its glory on the night in the garden when he turned for the last time to man, born of a woman, and realized that God alone was his life and his strength! How might Paul have finished his race, if this consciousness could have been abiding!

The accusations were made. They "laid many and grievous complaints against Paul," though they could not prove them. And then there was disclosed a carefully manceuvred plot by the cunning Jews, who, mayhap realizing the futility and illegality of their charges against Paul, were resolved to murder him, if not in one way, then in another. Information had been brought to Paul, no doubt, which led him to believe that he was to be sacrificed to the rage of the Rabbis, and when Festus said to him, "Wilt thou go up to Jerusalem, and there be judged of these things before me?" Paul had confirmation of the rumor that he was to be ambushed and killed on the journey to the Holy City. The biographer tells us nothing of the loneliness, or discouragement, or fear, which may have contributed to Paul's mental state. We only know that there, in Caesarea, when confronted by the aggravation of envy and hate of mortal mind, he said, "I appeal unto Caesar."

The mistake in making this appeal was recognized even by mortal mind's man, for Agrippa told Festus that Paul might have been released if he had not elected to carry his case before the emperor.

No remote incident has value unless it lays bare certain universal propositions regarding God and man, and the claims of evil. In our ability to get at the actuating principle, operating in every specific event, and our further ability to make the application to ourselves, lies our success in Christian Science. This is made plain in Science and Health, p. 243: "The divine Love which made harmless the poisonous viper, which delivered men from the boiling oil, from the fiery furnace, from the jaws of the lion, can heal the sick in every age, and triumph over sin and death." Caesar stood then, and stands to-day, for an assumption of authority, power, law, and government. Jesus clearly stated the distinction between the self-constituted authority of mortal mind, and the genuine control of divine Mind, when he said, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's." It is not possible that Jesus would thus have differentiated these two powers, if they had had the same characteristics, or if Caesar had been the viceroy of God. Jesus came to fulfil the law, as he himself declared, and if law had been vested in a temporal form of government, he would have been the first to recognize it and require obedience thereto. On the contrary, his whole earthly career was a protest against reliance on any power less than the divine. Whatever, in theory, invests matter, or material forms, with power, is a tendency away from Mind, and is, therefore, to be avoided. Belief in any such lesser authority is born of ignorance, fear, or a willing preference for "other gods." Through one of these avenues, mortals are still being induced to make an appeal to that which cannot afford aid, because it has nothing of the Divine in its makeup. The history of the human race proves that an appeal to Caesar brings no favorable answer to the petitioner. Remembering the axiomatic and therefore scientific statement that the nature, quality, and modus of error remain unchanged until destroyed, we may avoid the disaster which results from recourse to the mythical and unreal. Caesar in office or person was a type of cruelty, hardness, austerity, and selfishness. Mortals should have made the discovery by this time, that every application for relief to such a pretence of power will fail, because no good, no love, no compassion, inheres in Caesar.

In his practice of Christian Science, the individual finds himself often pushed into a corner by a semblance of events which mesmerism clothes with all the horror of reality. With the appearance of such a predicament, comes the suggestion to appeal to Caesar, and what we are learning is that the very evil which presents to us a threatening experience is the same evil which suggests the purely material way of escape. To disregard the threat, and the accompanying invitation to apply to the threatener for help, is the only scientific way, the way Jesus demonstrated so many times, and to which he so persistently called attention. That which produces disease, cannot heal it, that which induces poverty, cannot undo it, that which creates discord, cannot give concord.

The Christian Scientist finds, then, that he heals quickest and best, who gets farthest away from the false sense of discord. To reach out timidly for Divine aid, is to discredit and discount the ability of the Divine Nature. To treat matter, or disease, or personality, means that we are not rising above a sense of the actuality of these illusions. In "Unity of Good," p. 67, we read, "To say there is a false claim, called sickness, is to admit all there is of sickness; for it is nothing but a false claim. To be healed, one must lose sight of a false claim. If the claim be present to the thought, then disease becomes as tangible as any reality. To regard sickness as a false claim, is to abate the fear of it; but this does not destroy the so-called fact of the claim. In order to be whole, we must be insensible to every claim of error." Our individual discovery that Caesar is the cause and not the cure of human woe, gives impetus to our prayers, and turns thought toward the "Life of all Being Divine." The individual must discover this for himself, but he is aided in his efforts by the failures and successes of those who have preceded him in the work of exploration, and happy is he who can make the application for himself.