Article November 17, 1923 Issue

Overcoming the Pressure of Evil Belief

LUTHER PHILLIPS CUDWORTH

In human experience, with its complexity of seeming sorrow and joy, pain and pleasure, disturbances apparently caused by what men call outside influence are not uncommon to individuals. All of us have experienced what we have considered to be the pressure of almost overwhelming demands in the home, the schoolroom, the office, or the business house. The pressure of social demands, the persistent requests of friends for personal attention, the constant nagging of our own thoughts demanding gratification and satisfaction through apparent human needs or desires,—all these have greatly disturbed us at times.

As we go farther into the subject, may not the category of human ills and discord be rather comprehensively placed under the one subject-head,—a false sense of pressure? Sin sometimes occurs as the result of the seeming pressure of temptation; sickness, as the supposed culmination of pressure resulting from the breaking of false natural law, or from disobedience to divine law. Discouragement, envy, and hate all more or less arise from a belief in an evil influence,—a belief in the pressure of some evil claim greater than we seem to have the power to withstand or overcome.

It has been written that the original meaning of sin was "to miss the mark" or "to fall short of;" and just as the archer's arrow may fall to the ground before reaching the target, so mankind, perhaps aiming high in its desires for good but overwhelmed by so-called mental counter-currents,—material attractions and morbid illusions,—may fall short of its ideals, to grovel in the dust of materiality—sin, disease, and death. We accept the belief of the pressure of evil as we lose sight of the omnipresence and the omnipotence of God, divine Principle. If we really understood that there is but one source of true power,—this same divine Principle,—and that Principle is always presenting good, how then could we accept any argument of sin, sickness, or other discord?

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