Article December 10, 1932 Issue

In an address given as part of the program of the Iowa State College...

J. Latimer Davis, Committee on Publication for the State of Iowa,

Ames Daily Tribune

In an address given as part of the program of the Iowa State College annual religious emphasis week, by one who spoke concerning the vital relation of religion to life's experiences, incidental reference was made to Christian Science as considering evil to be "an error of the human mind." This comment did not misrepresent the teaching of Christian Science, but it needs amplifying to accurately describe Mrs. Eddy's viewpoint of the subject involved. I shall, therefore, appreciate space in which to place before your readers a brief statement showing that Christian Science does not brush aside the problem of evil as needing no attention, as could have been inferred from a casual reading of the report of the above-mentioned address published in the January 18 issue of the Tribune-Times.

On page 450 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy writes: "The Christian Scientist has enlisted to lessen evil, disease, and death; and he will overcome them by understanding their nothingness and the allness of God, or good. ... The Christian Scientist knows that they are errors of belief, which Truth can and will destroy." This recognition of the necessity for lessening the prevalence of evil in human experience clearly sets forth the attitude of Christian Science toward a subject which through the ages has perplexed mankind.

Mrs. Eddy's declaration of the need of overcoming all phases of evil does not in any sense imply that she ascribes power or reality to evil, but quite the contrary. For the overcoming and destruction of evil demonstrate its unreality, since anything real or of actual existence cannot be destroyed. All that is real was created by God who, according to the Scriptures, made all that was made. But evil or error, being the opposite of God, cannot possibly be of His creation, for all that He made was pronounced "good." Christian Science therefore holds that evil never existed as an entity, but only as a false belief or "error of the human mind," as was stated by the speaker whose remarks prompted this reply.

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