Article January 28, 1905 Issue

About Counterfeits

SAMUEL GREENWOOD.

The Christian Science teaching that evil in whatever guise presented, whether physical or moral, is itself an error, may seem hard of acceptance by those who mistake appearance for fact. It is contended that evil is true because of its visible and tangible effects in the misery and crime of earth, although the Scriptures tell us that God is Himself too good to see it. It must be true that the divine Principle of being, the infinite creator, imparts no evil to His manifestation nor find evil in it. Conceding this, human reason must eventually take refuge in the inevitable truth of Christian Science, that the sum total of evil is a huge deception, a self-destroying delusion, a counterfeit of all that is true and good.

The essential fact concerning evil is that it is not good, that it is bad, or in other words, spurious. It is not what it claims to be, hence it is a deceiver and a deceit. No one need go outside of his own experience to prove this, and once proving it he should recognize the truth of Jesus' statement that evil was a lie "from the beginning." Admitting that Jesus taught the truth, he who pleads for the real existence and entity of evil is in much the same position as the man who declares for the genuineness of bad money. Only a thief would venture to practise the latter theory, and a wicked man the former, so that neither position can be honest or good.

The man who has in his possession a genuine and a counterfeit dollar does not deceive himself that he therefore owns two dollars, unless he is ignorant of the nature of the counterfeit. A counterfeit dollar is not a dollar at all, despite its appearance. Its claim to be a dollar is a deception, an illusion. It may pass current among the ignorant, and for a time deceive many, but when its real nature is exposed its suppositional value becomes extinct. This value never existed, for it began as a counterfeit and at no point in its career was it anything else. Its purchasing power existed only in belief. A counterfeit dollar has but a false existence, for it begins as a lie and lies to every one who accepts it. To class it as a true dollar, or as having any claim to our respect, is a mistake. It is universally recognized as a cheat, an imposition, a crime.

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