Editorial April 14, 1923 Issue

Our Defense

Duncan Sinclair

When Mrs. Eddy discovered that evil is unreal, since God is infinite good, and successfully demonstrated the fact by healing numerous cases of disease and sin through her spiritual understanding, she set the world a-thinking along lines it had never thought before. It is true that every healing which had been wrought, every sin that had been destroyed through some degree of spiritual understanding, by prophet or apostle, or by the great demonstrator of spiritual law,—Christ Jesus himself,—proved that evil is unreal; but not even our Lord stated the fact in just that way: he, however, called evil "a liar, and the father of it," which amounted to the same thing; for a liar or a lie is lacking in all qualities of reality, or Truth.

Now, Mrs. Eddy's discovery that evil is unreal and, consequently, powerless is invaluable to humanity. What is the state of affairs in the world to-day? Look where we may, we find sorrow, suffering, and sin. Look within ourselves, and we see a similar drama being enacted, in greater or less degree, to that which is being played on the wider stage of the world. Evil indeed sometimes plays a big part, in belief. Its agent is the so-called human mind; and with this supposititious mentality is being waged the battle between good and its seeming opposite. Unless we know something of the truth which Christian Science teaches, we must remain under the spell of the illusion that a warfare is actually going on in what is called human consciousness. The truth is, however, that good alone exists as reality, and the evil which claims to oppose it is nothing but the argument of false material sense.

Keeping these facts before us, it should not be difficult to learn how to defend ourselves from the assaults of so-called evil. "When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him." Evil, the enemy, is always impersonal, although it claims so often to act through people. It is never aught but the argument of supposititious mortal mind; it is always a hypothetical lie; it is ever the error of physical sense. But the belief of evil seems capable of great subtlety at times; and never were its methods more subtle, and at the same time more aggressive, than to-day. For example, one of its claims is that it can be transmitted from an indefinite distance by one person to another, or, in other words, that one person, maliciously inclined, can project his evil thoughts so that they will find a lodgment in another's consciousness to the latter's detriment and distress. Some there be who believe this even to the extent of affirming that there are in existence laws of "mental malpractice." There are no such laws. God, infinite good, made them not, and knows not of them; and God knows all that exists. We must be positive as to this position. Either a thing is, or it is not. If we do not define the truth to ourselves, we are apt to remain under the delusion that evil is real and has power; and we lay ourselves open, accordingly, to the attacks of so-called evil belief from any and every quarter.

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