Article January 10, 1914 Issue

Jesus came teaching, not about evil, how to fear it and how...

R. Stanhope Easterday

Muncie (Ind.) Star

Jesus came teaching, not about evil, how to fear it and how to avoid it, but how to know good and practise it, to the utter exclusion of all sense of evil. Hence he came to be known as "a good man," urging at all times and under all circumstances that we "overcome evil with good." Logically deducing that disease or any form of discord was essentially evil, he applied his universal rule of substitution of invincible good, with the astounding result that he healed the sick as well as reformed the sinner. Such practical theology and such practical medicine logically included naught of the dolorous outline of evil and its stultifying foundation, matter, in the form either of superstition or of anatomy and hygiene. Hence he used no drugs, taught no medical laws, warned against no powers of darkness, but simply urged all to be and to think good.

Why should it be thought a thing improbable for the Master's followers in this day to make a practical demonstration of his sweeping admonition, "The works that I do shall he [the believer in every age] do also"? And why should it be any more necessary now than then to know the mysterious ways of evil, of "the world, the flesh, and the devil," in order that good may come? Christian Science does not ignore evil, or deny the existence of one iota of God's perfect, complete, and unchanging creation as chronicled in the first chapter of Genesis; it simply contends that dolorous outline in the remainder of the Old Testament but chronicles the tedious misconception of this universal perfection resulting from a "mist" and a "deep sleep" and a "dream," and the process of awakening therefrom and escaping from the bondage of material belief about spiritual fact. He who declared, "Now we see through a glass, darkly," also triumphantly foretold the time when we shall see "face to face." It is not in the mean time illogical for any "in faith, nothing wavering," to cling to and to contend for the inevitable goal of perfection, even in the face of the apparent imperfection on every hand. If the "flesh profiteth nothing," if no one in the flesh can please God, why deride those who in an honest effort at renewal of the mind are able so far to transform the body as to keep it more nearly well than when they were under the thraldom of theological dogma stultifying medical and hygienic so-called laws? Mrs. Eddy's text-book on Christian Science, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," outlines a much more reasonable handling of the troublesome quantity, matter, and a more sane and effectual effort to handle serpents of sin.

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