Article May 30, 1908 Issue

THE UNREALITY OF EVIL

REV. ARTHUR REEVES VOSBURGH.

Mrs. Eddy has indicated that "the cardinal point of the difference" between Christian Science and other systems is this: "That by knowing the unreality of disease, sin, and death, you demonstrate the Allness of God" (Unity of Good, p. 12). The denial of the reality of evil is supported by the simple logic that it has no origin in God, who is the only cause and creator. Since God made all that was made, and it was good, evil is no part of the divine creation. The practical confirmation of this teaching is in the results that follow its consistent application. Every healing, every reformation, every spiritual transformation that has come through the work of Christian Science, has come in demonstration of this simple statement of the truth.

The logic of this position is so obvious as to be self-evident. No thinking person believes that God made or makes evil, yet, What or whence is evil? is an age-long, world-wide problem. The experiences of mortal existence urge an aggressive testimony that it is here; and the Bible is full of the story of the evil that seemingly had to be encountered by those who loved and trusted the good. In the face of all this, how are we consistently to believe that evil is unreal?

To our human sense there is such a long interval between the conditions of mortal experience,—its perils and privations, its vexations and disasters, its iniquities and wrongs, on the one hand, and the divine ideal of perfection as the only reality on the other,—that it should not be an unexpected thing if the objection is raised that "it is a condition which confronts us—not a theory;" but this is just what Christian Science frankly acknowledges. It teaches and insists that evil is not an entity, but a condition, and a negative condition; that its whole foundation is a false belief, and that thus it is unreal.

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