Editorial November 20, 1915 Issue

Evil Has No Cycle

John B. Willis

Good endureth from generation to generation, and its modus alone can have permanence, prove an unbroken chain, and establish that legitimate law of heredity under which like produces like. Cycle and sequence belong only to the activities of Truth, and the seeming orderliness of error is but a counterfeit part of its falsity. Good is eternal, but evil can be broken off at any point; its effects come to an end at any moment, and this because it has no authority behind it, no Principle. Good is a spring whose perennial flow witnesses to an inexhaustible source, while error can be dried up because it has no source, and this is made to appear in every case of spiritual healing. Jesus taught that when forgiven the sinner is not simply excused from suffering the penalty attached to the violation of a mortal law, but that the so-called law itself is annulled, so that he is freed, as St. Paul declares, "from the law of sin and death."

Human sense is always and naturally frightened by its belief in the inescapable effects of sin, but in Christian Science we come to know that the pardon of sin means the destruction of sin, including its asserted cause as well as its effects, its root as well as its branches. Thus its absolute nothingness to Truth is brought into demonstration. This is expressed by Mrs. Eddy in the tenet of Christian Science which reads : "We acknowledge God's forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal" (Science and Health, p. 497), — a teaching which takes issue with practically universal Christian thought respecting the nature of evil and the tenacity of its hold upon humanity.

So long as a belief in the reality of evil is maintained, so long logical thought must be overwhelmed with the realization of its inevitable continuity. If one would defeat it he must first recognize with the great Galilean that it is unreal, otherwise the effort to overcome it will be paralyzed by the conviction that there can no more be a break in its cycle than in that of good, and the expectation of its end amounts to nothing more than a hope of utterly discomforting indefiniteness. When, however, evil is seen to be truthless, in both nature and expression, without substance, reality, or mission, and when this is proven true by the destruction of so-called "incurable" disease, then the entertainment of either fear of it or respect for it is seen to be out of keeping. Thus it dawns that apart from mortal belief evil has no necessary permanence, because it has nothing to hold to. An utter negative, it calls for neither kick nor courtesy. It has no actuality, and its seemings to us must therefore cease the instant it is known for what it is. Truth knowing is therefore freedom bringing, even as the Master said.

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