Article December 9, 1933 Issue

Positive and Negative

WILLIAM EVERETT VER PLANCK

A Dictionary defines "negative" in part as a denial; the absence of a positive quantity; and, in mathematics, a quantity less than zero. Negative quantities are reckoned oppositely to positive quantities. So we have the positive, representing tangible values, and the negative, representing an assumed reversal of the positive. Computations which involve only positive quantities always yield tangible results; but when negative quantities enter into the problem, the result is often intangible, and sometimes involves what are known in mathematics as imaginary quantities.

This is analogous to the general belief as to the nature or value of good and evil, Truth and error. As the positive quantity in mathematics cancels an equal negative quantity, so good and evil are supposed to be of equal rank and in continual opposition, neither being predominant over the other. The Bible declares, "The Lord he is God; there is none else beside him," and, "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." On the basis of these Biblical statements, Christian Science contends that God, good, is infinite, All, and that evil is nothing, its apparent existence being an illusion. So evil in all its ramifications is seen to be but the supposititious absence of God, ever present Love, a denial of His omnipotent goodness. Thus Christian Science builds its structure on the entireness and supremacy of God, the unity of good, and recognizes no negative or opposite of good as having power or reality. Evil, no matter how aggressive or persistent its claims, stands in the same relation to good, or Truth, as does the negative quantity to the positive in mathematics.

Then why, someone may ask, does not a single declaration of truth always instantly destroy the evil condition that is claiming recognition? The answer is that this result is attained when our realization of Truth is so clear that we acknowledge and realize God, good, to be the only power and concede no power whatever to the negative evil. Our Leader has written (Rudimental Divine Science, p. 9), "The spiritual power of a scientific, right thought, without a direct effort, an audible or even a mental argument, has oftentimes healed inveterate diseases." But through fear and the false education of the ages the human mind, though ready theoretically to acknowledge God's omnipotence, seems reluctant to accept the corollary of evil's nothingness. It is this inconsistency in conceding some power to evil that sometimes seems to hinder or delay beneficial results from Christian Science treatment.

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