Good Must Overcome

Truth will always be victorious over error, love over hate, harmony over discord. Is this hard to believe? This is a fact and can always be proved by those who have faith in God and who steadfastly hold to the Christian concept of God's all-power and ever-presence.

God is Truth and Love. These are names for the one, omnipotent creator. Harmony and goodness are His attributes, so we can know that these qualities are real and eternal, whereas error, hate, discord—all evil—are unreal, temporal, and temporary. They exist only in belief and persist in belief only as long as the belief of their existence is retained in human consciousness.

Mary Baker Eddy once wrote, "Falsehood is on the wings of the winds, but Truth will soar above it." And farther on she continues: "The archers aim at Truth's mouthpiece; but a heart loyal to God is patient and strong. Justice waits, and is used to waiting; and right wins the everlasting victory." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 277 ;}

At the time this was written, misrepresentations and misstatements were working havoc in the ranks of Mrs. Eddy's students and followers. Those were dark hours for the twelve-year-old Christian Scientist Association. Envy, hatred, and malice were influencing its members to send forth poisoned mental arrows to destroy the Christ-idea that had so recently come to earth in the form of Christian Science.

Many people—and probably all of the members of the Association or their relatives—had been healed through Christian Science. But the temptation to seek human greatness and the ambition to gratify their own human will influenced some unwary adherents of this compassionate religion to use questionable mental methods and to utter slanderous lies to break up its Christian organization. They did this, and others were duped to follow, even though all must have known it existed only to bless the world through the promotion of metaphysical healing.

One wonders how they could have been so misled. But Christian Science shows this adverse, criminal instinct to destroy the Christ-idea to be a hypothetical power, identical to that described in the book of Revelation as the great red dragon—a belief of evil only, not an actual entity. It is a false, malicious claim to power that in every age has tempted mortals to try to destroy the spiritual idea that, in fact, is inevitably destined to establish harmony on earth.

The evil referred to by Mrs. Eddy was not unknown in Christendom—Herod and Judas had lent themselves in its early days to this malicious instinct of the carnal mind and had attempted to destroy Christ Jesus. Nor was the attack in 1888 the last to be launched by the adversary against the Christ as represented by Christian Science. One of the dangers Christians face even now is that of being influenced by Christianity's enemy, the carnal mind, either to be its victim or its tool.

History indicates that the carnal mind resists in any way it can the development in human thought of the healing ideas of divine Truth. These ideas are destined eventually to expose the unreality of error and annihilate it altogether. It is not surprising, therefore, that Truth's standard-bearers have often become targets for harassment by the enemy—either to put them out of action or to tempt them to join the ranks of the destroyers, thereby to place them in the category of Judas, who eventually destroyed himself.

But no one need succumb to falsehood and be either a victim or a tool of mortal mind. Selfless, spiritual strength, loyalty to and love of Truth, exercise of the simple wisdom that can detect and expose the hidden tactics of the adversary, will keep one safe from personal harm or—the worse alternative—from being tricked, as Judas was, into serving its evil purpose to betray the Christ-idea.

Over the centuries the Master's beatitude has been comforting to Christians who were victims of attack: "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you." ^{Matt. 5:11, 12 .}

But what comfort is there for those who rashly allow themselves to be identified with the adversary and to be used by it as a tool to attack the Christ by persecuting Truth's faithful advocates? Is there for them, at best, only the bottomless pit of oblivion or, at worst, a fiery lake of perpetual remorse? No! God, Truth, is Love, and Christian Science shows that not only the victim can be sheltered and preserved, but the one who has allowed himself to become a tool in the hands of the adversary is also mercifully restored to grace when he revokes his allegiance to the enemy, the carnal mind, and returns wholeheartedly to serving the Christ-idea.

Whatever the carnal mind, or the adversary, may claim to do, it can never silence Truth's voice. It cannot hinder the progressive acceptance of the Christ, the true idea of God in human consciousness. Nor can it disrupt the harmony of man's true being. Good must always overcome