We often hear prayers in which a great point is made of calmly submitting to disease or injustice, be it ever so tragic, because humanly there seems to be no solution. In such prayer the petitioner is inclined to ask God for patience to accept what he feels cannot be changed.

The Christian Scientist, taking a diametrically opposite approach, challenges evil with the kind of prayer that truly glorifies God. Reverently he asks, "If God is All-in-all, how can there be evil?"

When Mrs. Eddy discovered Christian Science in 1866, she courageously exposed evil as illusion, error, a lie, a false belief in a power opposed to God. She saw that this mistaken concept is what the coming of the Christ, or Truth, destroys. In the century since her discovery of deific law, Christian Scientists have continued to challenge evil with the fact of God's allness.

In the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy makes this arresting statement: "If thought is startled at the strong claim of Science for the supremacy of God, or Truth, and doubts the supremacy of good, ought we not, contrariwise, to be astounded at the vigorous claims of evil and doubt them, and no longer think it natural to love sin and unnatural to forsake it,—no longer imagine evil to be ever-present and good absent?" ^{Science and Health, p. 130;}

Christian Science, the law of God, good, bases all its provisions for mankind upon His infinity. This exclusive truth of God's allness necessarily uncovers as false any seeming reality or power in what appears as His opposite. Reclamation of the sinner and healing of the sick inevitably result from the persistent application of this Science. Anyone who is willing to turn wholeheartedly to God and properly apply His law as taught in Christian Science can prove this for himself. Doubting Thomases should ask themselves whether they really believe in the power of Almighty God and His Christ.

The allness of God and the consequent nothingness of error are presented in the Bible Lessons, found in the Christian Science Quarterly, which Christian Scientists study daily and which are read from the desk in their churches on Sunday. One of these lessons has for its subject, "Ancient and Modern Necromancy, alias Mesmerism and Hypnotism, Denounced."

A teacher in the Christian Science Sunday School explained to a class of small children that "ancient and modern necromancy, alias mesmerism and hypnotism," the name for all evil, simply means error. Here we have these startlingly big phrases boiled down into a simple little word.

One small boy very earnestly asked her, "But if there is error, how can God be All-in-all?"

The teacher prayed for divine Mind's guidance; and as she silently declared that it is ever available, another boy in the class raised his hand. He confidently asked, "Why don't you say it the other way around? If God is All-in-all, how can there be any error?"

So he did say it, and the class repeated it together. They decided that whenever error seemed real, they would remember instead that God, good, is All-in-all.

When the boys came to Sunday School the following week, one said he had a healing to tell the class. He had been healed of influenza. The teacher asked him, "Will you tell us how you prayed?"

He replied, "Oh, I said, 'God is All-in-all, so how can there be any flu?' "

It is easy to see why Christ Jesus loved little children. Their pure minds accept the sublime truth that he taught, whereas learned scholars often reject it.

So powerful is the healing truth of God's supremacy that even a glimpse of it enables one to challenge and dispel error's mesmeric suggestions. Anyone who is willing to claim for himself God's allness, as that Sunday School pupil did, finds that he can reverse the suggestions of sickness or sin and successfully denounce them, no matter what disguise they may assume. This is letting in the Christ, Truth, which heals. Regardless of what awesome name error may choose or how long it has claimed to be real, it is still just error, nothingness.

The student learns to begin by challenging any appearance of fear with the question: Since God is All-in-all, how can there be any fear? To break the claim of evil, the serpent's hypnotic claim to frighten and confuse, he remembers that the Christ gives him the power to dispute and destroy it, because it is just a lie. Since God is Truth, how can a falsehood have any place in His kingdom?

Employing these truths in daily affairs, even the beginning student of Christian Science finds himself able to detect and dissolve the wrong beliefs inducing problems at home or in his daily work. He earnestly strives to learn more of God's law and to keep his lamp filled, trimmed, and ready to illuminate the dark corners of human thought where enlightening rays are needed. As he progresses in the prayer of affirmation and denial, he arrives at the standpoint St. Paul reached when he said, "If God be for us, who can be against us?" ^{Rom. 8:31.}

Whoso hearkeneth unto me
shall dwell safely, and shall
be quiet from fear of evil.

Proverbs 1:33