Nothing that is good can ever be destroyed. This fact may be a challenge to anyone who has thought that some things that he considered good have passed away in his experience. But the fact remains that whatever reflects the nature of good, or God, is eternal and not subject to decay or dissolution.

It is both healing and comforting to consider the various implications of this truth. Good is another term for God, or Spirit, and therefore whatever is good must also be spiritual. It must be an expression of the divine creative Principle, Truth and Love. Every expression of this Principle is as eternal as the Principle itself.

Jesus understood that man is the child of God, the image and likeness of the one Father. Therefore he knew that man is spiritual and indestructible. His understanding of this fact enabled him to heal the sick and dying and even to raise the dead. Mrs. Eddy says (Science and Health, p. 369), "He understood man, whose Life is God, to be immortal, and knew that man has not two lives, one to be destroyed and the other to be made indestructible."

If we would come under this law of indestructibility, we must increasingly identify ourselves with the nature of God, or good. Only evil is perishable. It causes suffering; and in order to escape this, humanity learns to abandon evil. As we part company with evil, and seek the unfoldment of Truth, we can overcome the belief of suffering. Christian Science teaches us that all that is material and evil is unreal and must eventually be eliminated from our experience.

In one of his parables, Jesus described the kingdom of heaven as a field in which had been sowed good seed. But an enemy had evidently also sowed tares in the same field. When both tares and wheat appeared, the question arose as to how they should be separated. The instruction of the householder was (Matt.13:30), "In the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn."

The field may be interpreted as human consciousness, in which error and truth seem to commingle. As the harvest takes place, that is, as Truth is lived and demonstrated, then the tares are bundled and burned, rejected and destroyed, and the wheat is gathered into the barn, is established in consciousness as demonstrated and permanently understood. Thus in all instances of healing, the good is saved from the evil.

The fact of the indestructibility of good is useful in healing". We can realize that the good reflected in the patient is of God and therefore is eternal; that evil has no identity and is self-destructive. We can impersonalize the evil, uncover its nothingness. It "is a liar, and the father of it" (John 8:44). It has neither identity nor reality. It has no man to express it. This impersonalizing is all part of the process of burning the tares.

It was because of the great goodness of our Master that he was able to demonstrate over the murderous intent of his foes. The self-destroying tares were not found in Jesus' consciousness. He refused to hate, to resent, to respond to error. He loved his enemies and forgave them. The consistency of good reflected in his consciousness saved him from the self-destroying nature of evil.

It was just the other way around with Judas. He destroyed himself. Our Leader writes on page 481 of Science and Health: "Sin has the elements of self-destruction. It cannot sustain itself." And then she adds. "Soul is the divine Principle of man and never sins,—hence the immortality of Soul." How important it becomes for us to understand and to demonstrate that man is not a sinner but the blessed child of God! This reveals man's individuality as an expression of Soul and enables us to apply this in healing the sick and saving the victim of sin.

The indestructibility of good does not apply only to good in general but to good individually expressed; that is, each individual expression of good is eternal. Jesus evidently understood this on the mount of transfiguration when he recognized Moses and Elias. And he said of the Christ, his true selfhood (John 8:58), "Before Abraham was, I am." Hymn No. 28 in the Christian Science Hymnal puts it in this way:

For all of good the past hath had
Remains to make our own time glad.

How comforting it is to learn that good can never be lost! And how it should encourage us to know that not a single particle of good can ever be destroyed. It should deepen our faith in good, its immortality and its indestructibilty. And it should encourage us to claim vigorously the protection this fact gives us. As we identify ourselves as the children of God, we come under the protection of the immortal and eternal. The ninety-first Psalm tells us, "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty."

William Milford Correll