Article March 24, 1917 Issue

"Whence comest thou?"

W. L. MERRITT

As a usual thing, the one who is coming into Christian Science finds the first rough place in his upward climb to be the question, If God is All-in-all, and all-power and allpresence, whence comes the evil that seems to finite sense to be in the world? In the first chapter of Job, even God is credited with this same question,—"And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou?" Satan's answer is typical of all evil and is the only way evil could ever be explained to mortal mind, namely, "From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it." In other words, mortal belief is the result of delving into matter for cause, and of believing in matter as substance; the result of a material, sensuous state of mind. It is, however, nothing, for it is the seeming absence of God, Spirit, as the true Life of men. It is as darkness, which although it is nothing to spiritual vision, to material sense is very real.

Where does a mistake in a mathematical problem come from? A little thought soon shows that it is due to a lack of knowledge of the principle of mathematics, or, personifying the mistake, the mistake might say of itself that it came "from going to and fro" in numbers, regardless of their basic law. Now let us see how this applies to the problem of the origin of evil. Mrs. Eddy tells us in Science and Health that God is Principle. Then sin, sickness, death, and all evil, seem to be present because we have gone "to and fro in the earth" and not lived according to Principle, or God's law. Manifestly the way to correct this mistake and its resultant discord is to apply divine Principle, Truth, to our every problem; or, as is said in the Bible, "Acquaint now thyself with him [God], and be at peace."

Again, it is easily seen that a mistake in numbers is not real in the absolute sense, but only seems real or true to the one who accepts it as correct; and as soon as the correct rule or basic law is applied, the mistake vanishes and is unreal. So evil is real only to those who indulge or believe in it, and when the law of God, or Principle of the universe, is applied to it, it vanishes into its native nothingness.

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