Article July 16, 1910 Issue

Agreeing with our critic's premise that in Christian Science...

Eugene R. Cox

New York Evening Journal

Agreeing with our critic's premise that in Christian Science there is no room for evil, it logically follows that an evilly disposed person claiming to be a Christian Scientist could find no abiding-place in the Christian Science church. Christian Scientists regard evil in precisely the same manner that Jesus regarded it when he cast out devils and healed the sick. He accorded to evil neither place nor power. He plainly and emphatically denied its reality, and said, "Which of you convinceth me of sin?" When he drove the evil-doers out of the temple, he demonstrated the superiority of spiritual power over the belief in an opposite or evil power.

Christian Science does not teach that the belief of evil does not exist to our human sense, but that in the true sense evil is unreal and always subject to the power of good. The spiritual power generated by right thinking and living tends to annihilate the false claims of evil and proves that we do not have to be overcome by evil, but that we can overcome evil with good. The kind of intelligence that is needed in order to understand Christian Science is gained not so much by intellectual training as by sincerely striving to live in accordance with one's highest understanding of what is right. Referring to a stubborn type of evil, which his disciples had failed to cast out, the Founder of Christianity said, "This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting."

The critic argues further as follows: "If, as this new faith claims, there is a healthful power exercised over others by benevolent thought, it logically follows that harmfulness will come as the result of malevolent thought." If it were true that there were two powers, namely, good and evil, then the doctor's logic would be sound. But if, as it happens, there is but one power, and that God, then his argument falls to the ground. To illustrate the doctor's logic, we might say that if light illuminates a dark room, then darkness will darken a light room. Now we know that the letter is not true, because darkness is nothing, and therefore has no power to destroy light. In like manner, good can overcome evil, but evil is powerless to destroy one iota of good.

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