Editorial November 7, 1964 Issue

Outwitting the One Evil

Helen Wood Bauman

Perhaps nothing is more helpful to one in his effort to destroy the claims of evil than the explanation found in Christian Science that there is but one evil—and this unreal. Discussing the Lord's Prayer in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy gives the original reading of the line, "Deliver us from evil," as, "Deliver us from the evil one" (p. 16). She goes on to say, "This reading strengthens our scientific apprehension of the petition, for Christian Science teaches us that 'the evil one,' or one evil, is but another name for the first lie and all liars."

In other passages in Science and Health we find the explanation of mortal existence as a false sense, the Adam-dream of Scriptural record, which peoples itself with evil concepts and erring, limited mortals. Within this dream error subtly claims to act as a multitude of evil egos, each saying, "I," each claiming identity.

We can outwit evil when we see these so-called identities as merely individualizations of "the first lie and all liars" and without actual selfhood—having no identity. Once we rob evil of identity, we remove its claim to consciousness. And once its claim to consciousness is removed, there is nothing to support the lies of matter and its discords, which error has claimed to produce. Then healing results.

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