Article July 23, 1910 Issue

THE UNREALITY OF EVIL

FRED C. SHELDON.

Probably no part of Mrs. Eddy's teachings has given rise to so much opposition and contention as her deduction of the unreality of evil. Every form of contumely of which mortals could conceive has been hurled against this statement. And yet Christian Science asks no more of human credence than is demanded by any branch of socalled natural science. In beginning the study of any subject the student is asked to accept certain statements or axioms as truths, which at first may not be thoroughly understood nor their reason perceived. As he progresses, however, and finds that from these axioms other rules are formulated or deduced which, when applied, correctly solve complicated and obscure problems beyond all question of doubt or dispute, the student's only possible conclusion is the absolute truth of these axioms.

Mrs. Eddy founds her teachings upon certain Scriptural axioms, from which she formulates or deduces her theories or rules, to the practical application of which, in the problems of life, she leaves the proof of their truth. The Scriptures declare that God made every thing that was made, that every thing He made was good, "and without him was not any thing made that was made." These axioms are accepted and professed by all Christian churches. Mrs. Eddy, however, was the first to deduce from them that if God made every thing, and made every thing good, He therefore did not made evil; and as He made every thing that was made, evil was not made and therefore does not exist in reality. Is this faulty reasoning? Does not the rejection of this deduction but prove disbelief in the professed axioms?

An illustration of the unreality of evil, as professed by Christian Scientists, may be found in the so-called exact science of mathematics. For example, in algebra we are taught to consider two classes of values, known as the positive and negative or plus and minus values, zero being taken as a suppositional center or neutral point, on the one side of which all values are plus and on the other side minus. In the solution of many algebraic equations we obtain two results, each equally correct in suppositional theory, but only one, the plus value, practical or really possible. In all practical applications the minus value is discarded or eliminated as an unreality or an absurdity. For instance, if, in the solution of an equation in which x is the unknown quantity we seek, we determine that x raised to the second power equals 4, then we are taught that x equals plus 2 or minus 2. In applying these results practically, we discard or eliminate the minus 2 as nothing or less than nothing, and use the plus 2 as the only reality. Yet in the formation and solution of the equation we must take into consideration this negative value, even while knowing its unreality.

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