Article July 29, 1933 Issue

All-powerful Goodness, Powerless Evil

ANNABEL N. SIMS

Benjamin Franklin's famous autobiography frankly reveals that early American statesman's search for a good and successful life. In it he gives a prayer he composed for his own daily use, which begins by addressing God thus: "O powerful Goodness!" This expresses a true and vital thought of God. Christian Scientists may well rejoice that Christian Science has not only revealed God as all-powerful, but evil as powerless. This is the only logical conclusion; for if God, good, is all-powerful, evil must be powerless Mrs. Eddy sets forth this fact on page 367 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," where she writes, "Because Truth is omnipotent in goodness, error, Truth's opposite, has no might."

Christian Scientists acknowledge this great truth of God's omnipresence and omnipotence and evil's utter powerlessness. What, then, does it signify if a student of this subject finds himself disturbed because of something that has happened or seems about to happen? It must mean that he is believing that evil has at least a little power. If he were not believing this, he certainly would not feel disturbed. So, if any Christian Scientist finds himself uneasy in thought, or not expressing the joy and security in good that is his right as a son and heir of the all-powerful God, let him search his thinking, bring out any lurking belief in evil's power, subject it to the searching truth that God has all power and, consequently, evil none. Thus he can know this truth practically, not merely theoretically, and reap the blessing of this knowing.

The truth is vividly stated in Science and Health (p. 228): "There is no power apart from God. Omnipotence has all-power, and to acknowledge any other power is to dishonor God." If disturbed in the least degree, let the Christian Scientist be quick to detect that what he is doing is, to some extent, believing in a power apart from God, and thus, instead of rejoicing in the omnipotence of his creator, he is, in effect, dishonoring Him.

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