The so-called mystery of evil has seemingly baffled theologians and philosophers of all schools and in all ages, yet it is evident that the most mystifying phase of the whole gigantic problem has been, after all, the apparently incomprehensible simplicity of fundamental good. It is a significant fact that the world's greatest Teacher, who is humanity's Saviour, did not thunder the fiery edicts of Sinai nor dispense with vengeful hand the plagues in Egypt. Our Lord quietly but masterfully propounded the beatitudes, and spake in simple parables, inditing as the one commandment of all, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God ... and thy neighbor as thyself." In the further admonition, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand," he eliminated from the whole proposition and at one master stroke that most mystifying of all the factors of evil, time.

The Pentateuchal writer in the very first chapter of the Book of books, gives us the effectual key to the entire labyrinth of false mortal sense designated evil, in the verse, "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." The words of this sweepingly significant declaration practically conclude the briefest and yet withal the most correct and comprehensive account of the nature, process, and completeness of that fundamental fact of all being known as creation. Successive chapters of the book of Genesis, and indeed successive chapters and books of the entire Old Testament, are but an account of the human misapprehension of creation, a history, as it were, of evil, written on the plane of human comprehension. This second account in Genesis proves upon close scrutiny to be a mistaken rendering of the fundamental, perfect, spiritual creation outlined in the first chapter and the first three verses of the second chapter.

As evidence of this, witness the fact that in the first account the term "God," meaning the self-existent and forever "I AM," is used to designate the creator and the term "create," meaning "to bring into being," expresses the divine activity; while the term used in the second account is "Lord God," i.e., Jehovah, or the Jewish tribal tutelary sense of Deity as a sovereign, and the incident activity is expressed in the word "formed," meaning literally "to give form or shape to" the already existent. It should be noted just here, also, that it was the spiritual, perfect, and complete creation of the first chapter, containing no taint of materiality or evil and inculcating dominion as man's dominant characteristic, which was pronounced "very good" in the estimation of the divine creative intelligence, or God; while of the latter, the human, material formation, we have the record that it was cursed.

This latter and false sense of being, moreover, as well as its rendering in later chapters of the older Scriptures, had its origin in the Adam-dream and continues to this present time in a "mist," "the same veil untaken away." Inasmuch as any false sense is but the supposed absence of a true sense of actually existent fact, this false, material sense of being, with its consequent evils known as sin, sickness, and death, is no more the reality of being than darkness is the reality of light, a lie the reality of truth, or a dream the reality of waking consciousness.

Our Saviour's teachings and methods during his lifeministry on earth, were entirely compatible with this view of life's problem and its ultimate solution in the gradual substitution of fact for fiction, truth for error, life for death—in short, the substitution of good for evil, the real for the unreal. First and above all else it was characteristic of him of whom it was said, "Never man spake like this man," continually to voice the unexpected and the opposite of human opinion; but he always proved the truth of what he said by what he did, in the elimination of all forms of so-called evil, including disease and death as well as sin. He, indeed, healed the sick by forgiving sin, made morally whole those whom he healed, and in it all boldly declared: "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," intimating that all his works, although directly contrary to so-called physical law, were in direct accord with the divine will and with divine law.

On one occasion he significantly declared of the woman who was "bowed together" that she was bound of Satan, whom he had defined as "a liar, and the father of it." Certainly in this the master Christian demonstrated the unreality and powerlessness of evil and the reality and potency of the woman's righteousness as a daughter of Abraham. Jesus antidoted the false with the true as naturally as one dispels darkness with light, error with truth, thus effectually fulfilling the prophecy, "He sent his word, and healed them." Neither fearing nor ignoring evil, showed practically how to overcome evil with good, and significantly commanded his followers in all ages in the words, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also."

Such faith in good as power and entity, to the absolute exclusion of evil, antedates time and has been developed and utilized to a degree in all ages, as witness the beneficent activity of patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and reformers, the beacon-lights of Christian faith throughout human history, each in turn snatching the ever-illuminating torch of purity and goodness and bearing it aloft undimmed, as amid the stultifying mists of mortal belief and the deafening thunders of billowy error the "still small voice" of Truth has continued to command, "Peace, be still."

Our own age and our own time has been blessed with men and women inspired more by intelligent love of good than by a superstitious fear of evil, helping and healing in consequence. Since the discovery of Christian Science by Mrs. Eddy, less than fifty years ago, both religious thought and scientific research have received a manifest and wholesome impulse, tending more and more away from matter, and the influence of the sermon on the mount, the Decalogue, the golden rule, and the first chapter of Genesis has been more in evidence as a practical factor in human economy.

Universally is mankind now as never before sharing intelligently in the spirit of Paul's sturdy confidence that "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."