No quality or action of Mind is negative, indeterminate, unsubstantial. He who is directed of Principle does not draw upon duality, improbity, and contradiction to attain his ends. He does not parley, prevaricate, or bargain with evil. He knows that there is only one course to take, and that is to prove evil's nothingness by its complete annihilation. To accomplish this, wisdom is required, that the nature of evil, often plausible and disguised as good, may be discerned. Courage is needed also to stand firm amidst all assaults; and patience, which knows neither intolerance nor resentment in dealing with mankind. Not sufficient is it to deny this error; it must be replaced by Truth.

The individual will be strengthened and comforted in remembering that on the side of right is lawfulness, and always final victory. Thus Paul voiced positive, fundamental reality when he declared, "We can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth."

He who believes in the possibility of failure or loss in the pursuance of right, overlooks the fact that righteousness based on Principle knows no loss or failure. Temptations may arise, weaknesses may have to be overcome, but they are simply the debris of mortal belief to be swept aside. They but constitute an opportunity to obey the command of Paul to the Romans, "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good."

Men learn to pursue and establish positive right as they see that it alone is valuable and secure. Then setbacks, reverses, and trials cease to engender disillusionment or even a passing temptation to abandon the course. "Let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil," we read in the fifth chapter of Matthew. Either, standing with Principle, we are constructive and are therefore positively, fundamentally, for the truth, or our yea and nay have become interchangeable and contradictory.

On page 173 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy writes: "Spirit is positive. Matter is Spirit's contrary, the absence of Spirit." We see then that whatever is material is negative in its essence and manifestation. When negative evil is faced with positive good, there must come about its final destruction. If this does not happen quickly or immediately, as it did when faced with the dynamic yea or nay of Christ Jesus, it is because the human mind still clings, through either fear or choice, to its negative beliefs, which have no law, no authority, and which call always for more of evil to bolster and perpetuate them. Disease or dis-ease announces a negative condition, and every mortal effort to finally eliminate it, however hopefully and conscientiously, from a negative standpoint, must fail.

The yea of spiritual sense, healing sickness and destroying sin, accepts no compromise, depends upon no favors, fears no denials. It is weighed down by no warning, mesmerized by no collective incredulity. Its nature being positive, it is neither deflected nor reversed.

On page 491 of the textbook Mrs. Eddy writes, "Material man is made up of involuntary and voluntary error, of a negative right and a positive wrong, the latter calling itself right." The negative right of a human sense of goodness, intermixed with evil, what has it profited the human race? The positive wrong of a matter world believed to be divinely created, into what tragic absurdities and bewildering disorders has it not continued to project mankind!

Only positive good will deliver men from the claim of positive evil, whether it call itself disease or sin, war or extermination. A negative sense of right, however conscientious, persistent, or self-obliterating may seek to accomplish much, but its yea and nay are as a house divided against itself. Not enough is it to replace positive wrong with negative right, with a relative, limited sense of good, associated with evil, tentative and incalculable. Only the virile, practical idealism of Christ Jesus, only the scientific, law-established, demonstratively illustrated truth as taught by our Leader, can uncover and conquer every negative phase of evil.

Let no one think that all that is required is the relinquishment or destruction of some evil, whether regarded as pleasant or not. This will not bring deliverance from the ills of the flesh, the defeat of our enemies, the ending of wars. The weak and vicious, the ignorant and divided, must be replaced by qualities of thought expressing their divine Principle, or once again the claims of negative right and positive wrong will assert themselves. Men can build a world wherein is the assurance of prosperity and of fellowship, but only as they cease to approach good as though it were tentative and unreliable; only as they comprehend the baseless nature of evil. Then they learn that overcoming lies not merely in having destroyed the enemies to peace and well-being, but in having forever established in their place the immortality of good, expressing the nature of Love, the reality of Life.

As each one in his daily living learns to obey the command of Jesus, to preserve the authenticity of his yea and of his nay; as he takes the side of Spirit, and wholly abandons the side of matter, he fulfills his task of meeting evil not with evil, not even with a mixture of evil and good, but with good alone; he enters into his heritage of dominion. In this vigorous, constructive knowing for ourselves and for the race there will be continual overcoming; all negative right will be forsaken and positive right will be ushered in.

Evelyn F. Heywood