Editorial December 23, 1944 Issue

The Only Basis for Control of Evil

Paul Stark Seeley

Referring to the supremacy of spiritual man over material conditions, Mary Baker Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 356), "Jesus reasoned on this subject practically, and controlled sickness, sin, and death on the basis of his spirituality." Here is the only basis on which you and I can ever really control evil and destroy it. That basis is our spirituality.

Material systems of therapeutics attempt to control sickness on the basis that man is made of material elements, and that affliction is visited on him by material forces, which other material forces may sometimes antidote. Matter holds the Janus-faced role of an afflictive and curative agent.

To secure freedom from sin, much theological teaching prescribes a similar course. It believes God gives man the capacity to sin, then punishes him for indulging it. One can have forgiveness, it avers, if he agrees to refrain from using this negative ability to do wrong or if that is not to his liking, by asking forgiveness for its indulgence, with no commitments as to his future conduct.

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