Article August 29, 1914 Issue

I have read Mr.—'s letter on the subject of Christian Science...

C. L. Ramsay

Leith Burghs (Scotland) Pilot

I have read Mr.—'s letter on the subject of Christian Science in a recent issue, and I should like to send a few words in reply. How to account for the existence of both good and evil has been the problem of all the ages. Most Christians look forward to the ultimate destruction of evil as foretold in the Bible, but how this is to be accomplished has remained just as great a mystery as the fact of its apparent existence. So long as evil is admitted to be a positive entity or actuality, its existence can only be accounted for in one of two ways: (1) God must be its author. (2) It must be self-existent, having no cause outside itself.

To accept the first of these hypotheses is impossible for the Christian who understands God to be infinitely good and pure and incapable of producing evil. To accept the second is equally out of the question, as that would be to admit the existence of two causes, two creators; in other words, two Gods. Christian Science explains that evil is a hideous misconception, a wrong or false sense of things, an illusion, mistake, or error, a lie about God and man, which, like any other lie, may produce disastrous results so long as it is believed, yet which can be abolished, but only by the truth. This is the explanation given by Jesus when he described "devil," or evil, as "a liar, and the father of it," and declared that "there is no truth in him." He also referred to the forces of evil as "the power of darkness." In the first epistle of St. John we read, "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all."

What, I ask, is the power of darkness, and what is it that destroys this power? Darkness may be defined as a negation, as a sense of absence of light, though natural scientists tell us that light is never really absent—but it seems so to our senses. What is the remedy? Surely there is but one,—to let in the light. Christian Scientists are finding that as the sunlight of Truth, the knowledge of the power and presence of God, good, is brought to bear upon the sense of evil, the false sense vanishes as darkness flees before the light.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

I have read Mr.—'s letter on the subject of Christian Science...

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access