Article September 4, 1909 Issue

No Christian Scientist is complaining because our critic...

James D. Sherwood

Beaumont (Tex.) Enterprise

No Christian Scientist is complaining because our critic believes in and contends for the actual existence of a personal devil; and if Christian Scientist have outgrown some of the dogma and superstition of the past, they should not be called "deluded folk who talk about him [the devil] as an influence of mortal mind."

If the devil is a person and is one, how did Jesus cast seven devils out of Mary Magdalene? Is it possible to put seven persons in one person? When evil beguiled Judas into betraying the Master, he was influenced by a love of money and for the approbation of the Pharisees. When recording this incident St. John says, "After the sop Satan entered into him." Certainly no one believes that a person entered into the person of Judas. Sin tempted him, and he fell a victim to the baneful mental influence that was arrayed against his Master.

In St. Luke's record of the temptations we read that Jesus rebuked the tempter with the exclamation, "Get thee behind me, Satan." At another time Jesus said unto Peter, "Get thee behind me, Satan." He used the very same language in both instances. Did Jesus regard Peter as the personal devil? was he not rather rebuking the evil suggestion which was influencing the thought and action of Peter? Jesus knew that evil thought was the procurator of evil deeds. Christ Jesus defined devil when he rebuked the scribes and Pharises, declaring: "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father we will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it." Here is the Master's declaration that there is no truth whatever in the belief called a personal devil.

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