The Science of good calls evil nothing.—Mrs. Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings, p. 27.

In following up his investigation of Christian Science, the student is often questioned respecting what is called the origin of evil, by those who feel that they must learn all about what mortal man was warned not to know, and which must become unknown before one can be wholly free from the enslavement of belief in it and from the dire conditions pertaining thereto. There is no profit whatever in pursuing this inquiry, for however long and diligent the search one must end where he begins, he can find nothing true in the unreal. The question, Where did evil originate? is asked from the standpoint of the questioner's own cognizance of and participation in this belief; while to understand the answer of Christian Science his apprehension must rise to the fact of God's infinitude. We correctly define evil as the human sense of the absence of good, but this sense never becomes a positive and active presence, the relation of evil to Truth keeping it within the limits of the suppositional. God is infinite, hence there can be no absence of good. One can as easily grasp a shadow, describe its quality and texture, and analyze its substance, as to locate the ends of nothingness or join them into a circle of reality.

There can be no basis for a claim of cause or effect apart from the infinite, but this is what a sense of evil purports to be. Infinite Mind, which knows all, does not know evil; the infinite presence of good, which includes all, does not contain it; the infinite creator, who made all, did not make it; omnipotence, infinite power, cannot do evil nor allow it to be done. What then shall we do with this supposition which is "neither person, place, nor thing"? (Science and Health, p. 71.) Since of itself it has no mind to think, no voice to speak, no power to act, no creator to father it, no presence in which to dwell, what shall we conclude regarding it? Unless we provide it a home in our consciousness, give it voice or lend it power, what can it be to us? If we are recognizing and obeying God as supreme, serving no other gods, seeking no other consciousness of Life, what need we care about evil further than to condemn it for its falsity?

The question of a starting-point for evil is generally looked upon as concerned with some period of hoary antiquity, rather than with our own time or with our own individual consciousness. Mr. Z. of the present generation reasons that because Mr. Y. of the preceding generation manifested evil, and Mr. X. before him, and so on, he must go back through the course of human generations to Mr. A. in order to reach the beginning of the great mystery of evil; whereas the case would not be altered if these representatives of mankind were separated by points of space instead of time, and Mr. Z. lived say a thousand miles east, and Mr. Y. a thousand miles or so farther, and so on until the globe is encircled, and Mr. Z. is separated from Mr. A. by the space of a few miles instead of centuries. Even if one could trace the course of evil back to the first mortal, what would he have to analyze that is different from what he finds in his own consciousness? Evil as a belief is the same in all times and with all people. The hatred that prompted Abel's murder is the same hatred that murders to-day. The change of age and environment does not change the nature or effect of the belief in evil, any more than they change the nature or effect of light and darkness. If one could find an origin for hate to-day it would be the same origin it was supposed to have in the beginning. The question is not one of priority but of fact or falsity.

This question is an individual one, it cannot be solved in the abstract, nor its responsibility placed upon some remote age or person. The vital point is not how evil originated with the first sinner, but how it seems to originate with you and me. When the inquirer discovers this, he has answered the question so far as he is concerned; he can work only with his own thoughts. When he learns in Christian Science how to overcome this serpent of evil, material sense, with the truth of the allness of God, he has learned the all-important truth with respect to it, and much more than all the human wisdom of the ages could teach him.

Scripture tells of a coming time when, as the result of spiritual growth, evil shall have disappeared entirely from human consciousness and experience. Assuming that this were that time, who of us would worry over the question of how evil ended? In the gladness of awakening from the dream of evil, in the joy of finding it to have been unreal, who of us would ask where it was buried or to see its grave? Looking forward from our own time, this would seem absurd to us; yet not more absurd than some of the questions we now ask regarding the beginning of error. Only recently a student came to ask about this question, and after admitting that God is All, and that evil is therefore not really true, wondered if I could explain how the sense of evil originated. Can we not see the absurdity of seeking a beginning for what we declare to be error, nothingness? that it would be just as reasonable to ask for the location of the bottomless pit of oblivion, into which infinite Truth consigns the lie of evil, as to ask for the origin of that which, according to our own admission of the infinitude of God, has no possibility of existence?

What knowledge do we have of either good or evil except through our own experience? We see the power of good manifested when we give it the ascendancy in our thought and make it the controlling factor of our conduct; we see how this overcomes the various phases of evil, how they relapse into nothingness, are self-destroyed, in the presence of good, and how the fraudulence of the claim that evil is something or some one is thereby exposed. We may see also that in the degree our thoughts are filled with goodness and purity, in that degree we do not respond to evil suggestions, for they become unreal to us. This tends to show that we shall recognize the absolute nothingness of evil when only good is present in our thoughts. As one reaches this conclusion his curiosity as to the beginning of nothing should be disposed of finally.

It is certain that while we look for an origin for evil it has a foundation in our belief, whereas our desire should be to destroy this false foundation by recognizing the allness of God. It is the belief itself in evil which prompts our search into its suppositional origin, while in the proportion that we lose our belief in it our thoughts turn towards good only. We cannot make anything more of evil than a deception, the believing of which brings mortals into all their suffering; hence our care should be to watch lest we are ourselves deceived thereby, lest we give it enough reality in our thoughts to look for its creator. Jesus demonstrated the utter unreality of evil even when it seemed most rampant in the beliefs of others.

The logic is faultless by which Christian Science deduces from the allness of God, good, that evil, from the standpoint of Principle, is a state of nothingness, a negation in its relation to real being; though happily for the welfare of mankind it has not left the problem there, but has made this logic practical. One cannot banish evil conditions out of human consciousness through the abstract reasoning that it is unreal, any more than one can reason evil into real existence from the evidence of the human belief in it. While the statement is scientifically correct that evil of itself is nothing, this statement must be proved to be of value to mortals. They need a practical working knowledge of the omnipotence and omnipresence of God, sufficient to begin the demonstration of man's spiritual dominion over evil, and intelligently to work out their freedom from it. This knowledge Christian Science makes possible to men, therefore it can say with authority that evil is a lie, existing in belief only; that whatever claims reality and power apart from God is absolutely and literally nothing; that there is no place nor time where evil could begin as a divine fact. Let us be glad to know that whatever does not originate with God, good, is not true; that there is nothing behind nor before us but the truth of infinite good and its manifestation.

Until the revelation of Christian Science, human thought had groped in the dark in the vain effort to solve the problem of evil, because unable from its view-point to recognize the omnipresence of good. The writer gladly and gratefully acknowledges his indebtedness to the Christian Science text-book, Science and Health, for his perception of the truth he has here tried to make plain; for although from childhood he had been taught to believe in the allness of God, he was taught also to believe that another being and power existed in opposition to Him. It is clear that upon such a basis one could form no true concept of the infinitude of God. The writer therefore feels that all he has learned of the true being of God as universal divine Principle, with the correlated truth that nothing else than good and its manifestation exists as reality, he has learned through Christian Science as discovered by our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, and as elucidated by her in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures."