Editorial June 22, 1974 Issue

Casting Out Devils

Geoffrey J. Barratt

Christian Science teaches that evil in whatever name or form is unreal and impotent. It proves that man is the immaculate and serene expression of God. Man can never include or possess anything that is not good, and erroneous or devilish thinking can never possess man. In truth there are not two limited opposing powers, good and evil, but one power, omnipotent good, which is inseparable from God.

Beliefs and theories about personal devils have persisted in human thought down many centuries. Seeming evil influence has been personified in art as a grotesque being with horns, hooves, a tail. Such depictions are totally misleading. Christ Jesus' encounters with the devil showed it to be impersonal evil—the suggestion of a power opposed to God, good. When a man brought to him his lunatic son, Jesus "rebuked the devil... and the child was cured."^{Matt. 17:18}

Even in what we may think is an enlightened and educated age many people seem still to have a latent belief in a personal devil— they believe in some kind of inexpressibly evil being which knows about them and would do them ill. Elements of superstition may persist until we come to think in a spiritually scientific way. Superstitions promoted in magazines and films, if accepted as fact by readers and viewers, may tend to externalize themselves—according to lying mortal belief—in bizarre or even lethal events. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures Mary Baker Eddy states: "Mortal mind sees what it believes as certainly as it believes what it sees. It feels, hears, and sees its own thoughts."^{Science and Health, p. 86;} But mortal mind, according to Science, is a belief all of us can master through spiritual understanding and living.