Editorial September 21, 1946 Issue

"Not guilty"—Rejoice!

John Randall Dunn

Is there not a vast difference between the denouncing of evil persons and the condemning of impersonal error? The master Christian gave to humanity a sorely needed lesson on this subject when, nailed to the cross on Calvary, he did not condemn his enemies, but prayed for them. "Father, forgive them," he entreated, "for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). Is it not evident that Jesus condemned the sin, but not the victims of sin?

The word "condemn" has unlovely implications, unless it partakes of the Christly repudiation which nothingizes sin and thereby saves the sinner. There is, then, a condemnation that is righteous. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. 448), "Evil which obtains in the bodily senses, but which the heart condemns, has no foundation."

In the Funk and Wagnalls Dictionary this interesting light is thrown upon the word "condemn." We read: "Condemn is more final than blame or censure; a condemned criminal has had his trial; a condemned building cannot stand; a condemned ship cannot sail." Christian Science teaches that God, who is infinitely good, never could make evil any more than solar radiance could produce its absence, darkness. So all that is discordant, diseased, hateful, and destructive stands everlastingly condemned in the light of metaphysical truth. At the bar of divine justice it is branded lawless, impotent, unreal. What a joyous message is this for the burdened sons of men! Cheated, victimized indeed, have been the multitudes of earth's blinded ones who have been living in the condemned houses of mortal sense or traveling on the unsafe ships of precarious materialism.