Editorial August 24, 1935 Issue

The Eternality of Good

Violet Ker Seymer

In "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 12) Mrs. Eddy states: "We own no past, no future, we possess only now. If the reliable now is carelessly lost in speaking or in acting, it comes not back again." Is the Christian Scientist sometimes careless in the way he speaks or thinks of the so-called past? Is it past if he is giving it a place in his present thinking? Although the student usually makes the most of his glorious opportunities in the present, a remnant of superstition may still remain regarding what is called time. Does he believe, for instance, that by right living now he is redeeming past mistakes which were actually real and dreadful? Repentance and reform are certainly needed, and they are scientifically achieved through recognizing the eternality of good to which God's image incessantly bears witness. Evil has, in reality, no history.

To believe there actually was any past evil does not show complete loyalty to the eternality of good. To drop a curtain on a supposed past and refrain from looking behind the curtain is only an improved step. It is not an entirely scientific attitude. In eternal Truth there is no curtain and nothing to hide behind it. In infinite Mind there are no pigeonholes for dark memories, sealed or unsealed. In everlasting Love fear and animosity are unknowable. In eternal good there is no temporal evil. In divine Principle there is no false concept to be redeemed. In perfect Mind there is not one erring belief. Moreover, man in God's image has never been rendered unconscious, or unmindful, of his heritage. His spiritual senses apprehend eternal good. These transcendent facts are practical to us in the measure of their adoption into our thinking and our eager yielding to Mind's transforming power.

Our Leader states in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 79): "Immortal man is the eternal idea of Truth, that cannot lapse into a mortal belief or error concerning himself and his origin: he cannot get out of the focal distance of infinity. If God is upright and eternal, man as His likeness is erect in goodness and perpetual in Life, Truth, and Love." Mrs. Eddy's use of the word "is" in "the scientific statement of being" (Scientific and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 468), emphasizes present perfection. And this same word emphasizes the unreality or nonexistence of anything mortal or material. Evil is not going to become unreal; in its every phase it is unreal now. All the handicaps attributed to a material origin can be laid off through the recognition that God is the only Life and Mind of man.

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