Editorial April 14, 1923 Issue

Resisting Evil

Ella W. Hoag

A great deal is said about resisting evil. Men believe they are constantly being called upon to combat it in one form or another. All believe they have the same desire to have it done away with, and manifold efforts are made to unite in its destruction. And yet, to material sense, evil still seems to flourish. One of the great reasons why the efforts to master this common enemy have been so meagerly rewarded is that men have not understood how to resist evil. Looking upon evil as real and personal, they have largely imagined it can only be overcome personally.

Jesus taught positively the impersonality of evil. He said that evil is "a liar, and the father of it." Since the old adage, "like father, like son," is axiomatically true in regard to evil, the liar could only beget lies. Jesus also said of this liar that he "abode not in the truth." In other words, devil, or evil, is entirely "liar"; not that which sometimes lies and sometimes tells the truth, but which never does anything but lie. Now every one will be willing to admit that what is wholly liar or lie must be without any truth or reality, without origin or entity, without substance or activity. Jesus also said plainly, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free;" for what but Truth can free from lies?

From all this Christian Science deduces the logical conclusion that right resistance of evil can only be brought about from the standpoint that Truth is power and reality, while evil is never a formidable something, personal and powerful; instead, it is naught but illusion, unreality, nothingness. In Mrs. Eddy's Message to The Mother Church in 1898 entitled "Christian Science versus Pantheism" (p. 6), she says: "Let us continue to denounce evil as the illusive claim that God is not supreme, and continue to fight it until it disappears,—but not as one that beateth the mist, but lifteth his head above it and putteth his foot upon a lie."

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Among the Churches
April 14, 1923
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