Article April 4, 1925 Issue

Forgiveness

THOMAS R. MINTURN, JR.

Throughout her writings Mrs. Eddy emphasizes the need of impersonalizing evil in order to handle and destroy the belief. In healing a sick person Jesus said, "Thy sins be forgiven thee;" and after a patient had been healed, "Go, and sin no more," he said, showing that the trouble was the effect of a wrong viewpoint arising from the belief that man is material, that he can be sick and sinful. Jesus did not condemn the individual, but forgave him; that is, he blotted out the sinful mental condition by knowing and proving the allness of God, good, and the nothingness of evil.

Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 71): "Evil has no reality. It is neither person, place, nor thing, but is simply a belief, an illusion of material sense." Evil may seem to obtain in the lives of mortals, but the office of the Christian Scientist is to reflect the light,—the truth about God and man,—knowing that it is this light which will ultimately uncover and destroy all mental obliquity through the revelation of the latter's nothingness. It was the Master's wonderful clarity of thought and singleness of vision that enabled him to read or discern his patient's mind, thereby enabling him to destroy the wrong views which bound the individual. And nothing can endow one with this incisive metaphysical discernment except Christian Science lived and demonstrated.

In endeavoring to see evil in an impersonal way, we should not criticize or condemn another for being more susceptible to it than we ourselves. Rather should we recognize evil as a common enemy against which we should raise a barrier of truth, in order to save one and all from its seeming effects.

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