Editorial October 29, 1938 Issue

Casting Out Evils

George Shaw Cook

In the time of Jesus, belief in the existence of demons or devils, which were thought to control their victims and to cause sickness, insanity, and so forth, was quite common, judging by the Gospel record. However, the Master was not deceived as to the nature of these so-called demons. He understood them to be, not persons or things, but evil beliefs of the carnal or mortal mind. And when these beliefs were cast out of human consciousness, the person supposed to be possessed by the so-called devil or devils, was healed.

Luke's Gospel (11:14) says: "And he was casting out a devil, and it was dumb. And it came to pass, when the devil was gone out, the dumb spake; and the people wondered." Commenting on this passage, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 190): "It could not have been a person that our great Master cast out of another person; therefore the devil herein referred to was an impersonal evil, or whatever worketh ill. In this case it was the evil of dumbness, an error of material sense, cast out by the spiritual truth of being."

Christian Science makes it clear that when Jesus healed the demoniac, the epileptic boy, the Syrophenician woman's daughter, and others supposed to be possessed of devils or demons, he did not cast out anything but erroneous beliefs. His understanding of the omnipresence of divine Mind, Spirit, God—infinite good—demonstrated the fallacy of the belief that devils or demons were present or had power to cause disease or suffering of any kind.

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