Editorial April 8, 1967 Issue

The Truth and the Lie

Helen Wood Bauman

Apart from Christian Scientists, one rarely hears Bible students quote these words of Christ Jesus, which perfectly describe the devil, or evil: "He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it."^{John 8:44;} Here we see evil defined as the opposite of Truth and the father of lies.

Mary Baker Eddy, alert in discerning the great significance of this statement, quotes from it frequently; and she bases the scientific denial of evil upon the Master's words. In "Unity of Good" she says: "Now a lie takes its pattern from Truth, by reversing Truth. So evil and all its forms are inverted good. God never made them; but the lie must say He made them, or it would not be evil."^{Un., p. 53;}

When sickness, temptation to sin, or any other limitation of good strikes, the main thing to do is to reverse the lie and also to affirm the truth—and live it. The lie is the opposite of the truth, and it claims to usurp the place of spiritual reality. But the lie can never destroy reality, which is always good and which remains intact regardless of what the material senses depict.

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