Article February 3, 1912 Issue

EVIL IMPERSONALIZED

CLARENCE W. CHADWICK.

The apostle's declaration that "we wrestle not against flesh and blood" touches upon a subject of vital import to the disciple of Truth, to wit, the impersonalization of error. A correlative thought from Science and Health (p. 71) is that evil "is neither person, place, nor thing." These two statements, understood scientifically and followed to their legitimate conclusion, help to lead mortals out of sense into Soul, the land of promise.

The holding of thought to finite personality, alias flesh and blood, is the error which would shut out the recognition of Christ, Truth, and so prevent the overcoming of evil with good. Our Leader's counsel is that Christian Scientists "think, speak, teach, and write the truth of Christian Science without reference to right or wrong personality in this field of labor" (No and Yes, p. 7). There is abundant evidence of assurance that the whole world is beginning to awaken to an impersonal sense of evil, or error. It is slowly but surely accepting and adopting the teaching of Christian Science, that the only devil there is or ever will be is the evil thought in human or mortal consciousness. To be sure, this evil thought claims a personality from which it is inseparable; but this claim does not and cannot make evil something which it is not, viz., a person or a thing. All will admit that when Jesus cast devils out of people, these people manifested an improved mentality, thus proving that the so-called devils were so many evil thoughts or beliefs.

When evil thoughts are conquered, one's sense of personality has changed. When the Christ-idea finds expression in individual consciousness, the I or Ego ascends to the Father, and the admission of a supposed selfhood separate and apart from God is no longer made. The sense of corporeality is then placed under the control of Spirit, the one Mind, and the process of overcoming the human or relative with the divine or absolute is begun. This is transformation by the renewing of the human mind, rather than annihilation. Should the conscious control of Spirit be lost sight of at any time, and evil or wrong thought be allowed to find expression, such thought is no longer associated with man's true individuality. There is no longer the ignorant admission that man is either sick or sinful. In other words, the belief that man is sick or sinful can no longer be admitted, even as a sick or a sinful man's belief, for there is no such man. The real man, the image and likeness of God, reflects only the nature of God, good. The false claim, therefore, that man is expressing something which is unlike God, is purely an impersonal claim of impersonal evil or error. First and last it is but a belief without a believer. When seen as such and separated from all that constitutes real manhood, healing takes place, regeneration ensues.

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