Editorial September 13, 1924 Issue

Defense against Evil

Duncan Sinclair

Mortal mind, the supposititious counterfeit of divine Mind, in belief is ever suggesting that evil is real and able to thwart or annul the good intentions and efforts of men, causing them to be sorrowful and sick, and making their lives inharmonious and unhappy. Evil seems to haunt the lives of many to such an extent that it would sometimes appear as if good had altogether taken its departure from them.

The so-called problem of evil is therefore the gravest problem before mankind, since it claims to enter into every human activity, confronting men everywhere, be their work what it may. Sometimes it seems to operate outside of them through others, affecting them indirectly; at other times it appears to act directly upon them, claiming to take possession of their thoughts. Our eyes cannot be shut to it; it must be reckoned with.

Before the advent of Christian Science, the world was to a great extent hopeless before the belief of the reality of evil. It had been the enigma of the ages, an inscrutable mystery on which thinkers might speculate and philosophize, but to which they could find no solution. Its seeming reality contradicted the goodness of God and denied His perfection. In short, evil, so it seemed to mankind, was an insoluble problem, one that had darkened all history and one which would continue everlastingly to ravage the peace and joy of men, so real did it seem. Upon that apparently hopeless darkness Christian Science dawned, to chase away its shadows with a light whose brilliancy was at first hardly believable by those who had formerly sat in the gloom.

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